


Tales of the Pulse Part 1 - Final Flashes

by Titan_MassMind



Series: Tales of the Pulse [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Justice Society of America (Comics), The Flash (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, F/F, F/M, Heavy BDSM, Muscles, mini-giantess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:48:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22357441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Titan_MassMind/pseuds/Titan_MassMind
Summary: It is the Night of the Pulse.  While across the globe, more than a hundred thousand humans transform into the terrifying omega-tier predators known as Hunters, billions do not.  While billions are tyrannized, murdered, raped, and systematically despoiled, some fight back.They are losing.Trapped in New York City, far from his beloved Keystone and his beloved Joan, Jay Garrick was once called the Fastest Man Alive; now, that title means barely more than Fastest Turtle Alive.  He's surrounded by gargantuan, heavily-muscled women, ninety percent of whom are faster than he is.  His only edges are decades of experience, a few shortcuts with the Speed Force, and the fact that the monstrous Hungers distract the worst of them.With the help of Checkmate's Black Queen, Sasha Bordeaux-- transformed into a super-OMAC by Bruce Wayne's Sister Eye distributed disaster protocol-- he's been doing the only thing he can: save lives.  Direct combat is suicide.  So as New York burns, as his spirit yearns to take the fight to the Hunters, he and Sasha do the only thing they can.Run.  This is the final night of the Age of Heroes, and these, its final flashes.
Relationships: Original Character/Original Character
Series: Tales of the Pulse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1602472
Kudos: 3





	1. What a Night for a Pulse

"What a fu-- an effing night."

It is the night of the Pulse. Sasha Bordeaux looks guiltily at her partner in salvage operations. He’s sort of famous for being that kind of old-fashioned.

Specifically, it's been two hours since more than a hundred thousand normal and metahumans experienced the catastrophic change that makes them into nightmares’ beautiful dreams: into Hunters.

It may be the end of the world.

Despite his exhaustion and several bruises healing a lot less quickly than they should, Jay Garrick-- the first man to be known as the Flash-- just has to smile. He stretches, limbering up cramped legs and pushing back against the big, earthen wall of the artificial hill. His counterpart is looking embarrassed-- as near as Jay can tell under the chrome.

"Well, darn, Sasha," he replies to his slightly taller, darker haired companion. "You tell one teenager to watch his language, when he needed an authority figure to resent…"

"And it follows you around forever," agrees Sasha Bordeaux. "I know about authority figures-- believe me."

And since running into several (both in the right and wrong ways) is why the woman in question is a good six foot two right now, she's probably right. A former bodyguard and backup for a certain Bruce Wayne, become the Black Queen of CHECKMATE. Fieldwork haunts her still.

She usually walks around as five foot seven, but tonight? She's extra shiny tonight in the nanobot coating of an OMAC drone on top of her already top-of-the-line cybernetics. 

The big metal mohawk probably adds another half a foot or so. Like the cybernetics, the OMAC shell (fin and all) are courtesy of her time in Checkmate, the theoretically top-secret US agency for metahuman-level intelligence and operations. He suppresses an irreverent observation that the hairdo suits her.

_ Especially since it does-- I've seen the files on her sniper training. _ "Anyway, Sasha," Jay says with a wry, half-ragged laugh, "I think you can definitely call this a-- ah… a fucking night, one way or another."

She joins him in near-crazy chuckles, half-crying as she leans on her side of the little cavern. It does them both good to laugh. Despite the vast differences in their careers and career outlook, Jay thinks they've got a lot in common.

Outside of the OMAC composite shell, they have a similar build, as it happens. They both look like they should have infinite energy in their wiry, whipcord thin frames, with the sort of strength people are always surprised to see in gymnasts or ballet dancers. They even both have blue eyes and dark hair. Jay has to admit Sasha's is darker than his was even before his started to go gray.

_ That's alright, it's dark enough in here I can't see and she's seeing too much of the spectrum to care, I think. _

It has, in fact, been a fucking night, and both of them are past exhausted. One man who can draw on the lightning of the Speed Force, and a cybernetic super-agent constantly beamed extra energy. Except when far enough underground, and she's apparently still in-network at this point.

They both nearly slump to the cold, dirty floor. It's only the presence of their opposite number that keeps them both standing. Comrades on a run through the hell once called their home, they lean into one another almost as much as they press against the walls.

In the dark, past pain, past fear, and on at least the fifth wind apiece, they're pushing the very limits of the Speed Force and hyper-technology, respectively.

You wouldn't think it would be possible.

_ Of course, I wouldn't have thought I'd  _ ever  _ spend a night trying to save civilians and fellow superheroes alike from a horde of gigantic, generally naked women. Women who look like poor Kara got fed the kryptonian version of Venom. And seem to care about nothing but sex, pain, and death, not generally in that order. _

His vision swims. Just for a brief moment. It's enough to worry him, but he can't take more than the five minutes they allotted for this check in.

_ It's been two hours!  _ And so it has been; two hours since the end of the world.  _ I'm not going to think of it like that, _ Jay tells himself. Even though he's pretty sure that Sasha is already certain it has.

_ At least she hasn't given up all hope; she's thinking of this as something to be survived, not something to be stopped. _

Jay's faith is still strong. He hopes that the current catastrophe can be stopped, while there's still a chance for rebuilding. That the next day or the next week, civilization can pick itself up off the ground, dust itself off, mourn the dead, and keep going.

Not so far gone that its survivors can only salvage a new civilization from the ashes of the old.

He holds fast to that hope. Tightly. It sustains him, charges his lightning, so he holds fast to it.

Even though the "Sister Eye" network seems to agree with his rough estimate that there are two hundred of these poor, twisted, beautiful monsters in New York State alone.

It's been more than sixty years since he became the Flash, the first Flash. He's come through time-- literally-- and all manner of turmoil. And just because it's quite possibly literally his ass on the line, doesn't mean he's going to stop hoping.

Jay and Sasha share a glance. They have loved ones. He married his, and it doesn't shame him how grateful he is that his home still has an old-style fallout shelter.

The Earth seems to be the only thing that conceals from these Hunters.

One of Sasha's own loves could never have been, and she knew that before the Batman in question did, Jay suspects. But now, it might never be. There's  _ no  _ chance the Bat won't be out tonight.

An extraordinary man with an absolutely unique will, against beings to whom superheroes are little more than fancy-costumed gnats.

Of course he'll be out there, using the shadows against predators in the shape of women. Giant predators who can see in the dark. And with Sister Eye in Sasha's head, she'll know the second there's triumph… or disaster.

The other, surprisingly, was one of Jay's good friends and sons-of-choice. Perhaps more a nephew; Jay had been good friends with the original Mister Terrific. Michael Holt is more than a worthy successor to Terry Sloane; perhaps as brilliant as Bruce Wayne, just as driven, but without the same grim-darkness that turned the Batman's drive into obsession.

In fact, he's the Chairman of Jay's own Justice Society. In one alternate future of this very Earth, Michael, a black man, was forced to spend  _ decades _ as a quisling to a neo-nazi regime. One that used another Justice Society member to depower all metahumans and empowered technology with such terrifying effectiveness they were able to hold off the  _ Green Lantern Corps _ . 

Watched and in some cases condemned his fellow heroes-- not to mention his own race-- to executions. Saw the last few holdouts with the will to rebel become demoralized by his steady betrayal. Just to get one opportunity, one last opportunity to breach Obsidian's defenses, and send a last desperate message back in time to hope to forestall the horror.

It worked, of course. Almost no one else remembered, but Jay's own trips through time revealed the truth-- and that Michael Holt himself still did. With the worst of Hunter sadism and sadistic sexuality falling upon men, Jay has to wonder whether or not Michael is trying to decide if  _ he _ can make lightning strike twice.

Jay prays, when he finds the breath. He knows-- from personal experience talking to the very Wrath of God-- that the Presence doesn't usually intervene in disasters caused by sapients' choices.

But he has to hope that, as these women are as much victim of the Pulse as victimizers, there's some chance, some slender reed that the world can once again be saved.

Time's ticking on, each tock another stroke of the lightning. Nowhere near as rested as he needs, Jay pushes himself to stand. It's time to meet the darkness on his feet, just like always.

\---

"Okay. We're going to need to get back out there soon. What does your unexpected cranial companion read on the situation, Sasha?"

Sasha grimaces a bit. Numbers flow, data transfers, and a quiet, serene voice whispers in her ear. "They're starting to slow again anyway."

It's not good news. "Unfortunately," she continues, "that's 'because most of them have targets,' slow, not power down slow. Did you pick up the data stream?"

"Yep, thanks for letting, ah, her, use your speakers. I know you're not happy about this either, and I promise we'll try to get you--" Jay had wanted to hear some of the map coordinates and status updates directly, and Sister Eye had offered to use the mother of all fast-forward buttons.

Unfortunately, had required Sister Eye to be  _ available _ .

"He should have known better!"  _ Oh, Bruce. Can you never leave enough alone? _ At least he'd left the networking option as just that, an option.

"I mean it-- I can't believe he made  _ another _ meta-monitoring AI! Sorry, Essee." Sister Eye's quiet affirmation of acceptance (of both the SE acronym and Sasha's frustration) blunts some of the pain.

"I hear you," Jay says quietly. "I'm sorry we have to keep leaning on it-- and you, for this." The older man means it, too, and she appreciates that, at least.

Still, she feels a bit guilty, too. After all, Sasha had apparently woken Sister Eye up from a sort of electronic dreaming when Sasha had executed Bruce's Overrun Protocol.  _ And I guess Sister Eye is less of a monitor and more of a manager. Counter-disaster, not paranoid peeping. Probably _

As long as Sasha can trust what Sister Eye said, and Bruce Wayne's vague assurances, of course.

She still remembers the recorded message. The instructions. The not-explanation.

"I'm sorry, Sasha. You're not going to like this. But I can't trust anyone else with this. I promise; it's safe for you."

He hadn't even called in person-- of course, Sister Eye's last reports on the actions of the big names had made it clear why.

Being a superhero always makes you a target. It's just that usually, it gives you the tools to do something about it. But tonight…  _ Tonight is why he made Sister Eye, whether or not he actually knew about it. _

She hopes someday she'll be able to ask. Did he know that there was this time bomb ticking specifically? Or, as she hopes, was he just worried about the number and power of metas, and decided that there had to be  _ something _ ?

Who could have foreseen the Pulse? The Hunters? The only possible connection might be the disappearance of every major, medium, and even most of the minor players in the magical world several months back.

But Sister Eye's reports say that the Hunters don't seem to be affected by classical countermagic elements from blessed salt to holy water to even something called "moly" that Sasha only vaguely recognizes from the phrase.

Two to three meters tall. Six and a half to nearly ten feet, imperial. Musclebound enough to make the Man of Steel look like the Boy of Kleenex-- and, apparently, had nearly gone  _ through  _ him like Kleenex.

Fast enough that only Jay's  _ experience _ with his speed, not the speed itself, gives him an advantage. Senses so expansive that they could track a single molecule through the worst New York back alleys… On the opposite side of the city.

Sister Eye thinks they have some sort of advanced intelligence or something, too, but in that, at least, they had a weakness.  _ Yeah, if you count being easily 'distractible' by newer, prettier bodies to rape as a weakness. I guess the berserker anger can be a weakness… _

_ If only we could do something other than send them elsewhere while we rescue a few more people _ .

Whether the hero community, meta-level ops like Sasha's Checkmate, or even those villains who stood up to help-- everyone is having those sorts of frustrations. And worse

They certainly weren't winning any fights. The Matrix-version Supergirl had been pounded into a kind of animate goo in less than a minute; and the current Blockbuster hadn't even managed that. Hourman had been smashed so hard it took Jesse Quick to reach him before the Hunter did-- they'd had to run, too.

Green, Red, Blue, and Yellow Lanterns are out in force-- and their energy constructs are being totaled by near-misses, let alone even glancing blows. Sister Eye is already concerned that the Guardians and their equivalents will pull the Corps away from Earth. Sasha is more worried that if they don't, the Hunters will have those  _ rings. _

When Firestorm tried to use earth elements, it treated them like anything else changed by humans.  _ At least he was able to tunnel and escape-- Essee thinks he's running his own set of rescue missions. _ It's better than the poor Atom-- either squished, or caught.

The Red Androids were nearly all shattered-- even Red Volcano's use of geokinesis seemed to break whatever "rule" kept the Hunters from breaking, lifting, or seeing through unworked earth. Geo-Force and Terra had no more luck on their own, but seemed to at least be able to defend Markovia together. Lady Zand held the line in Zandia.

Sister Eye believes that one's home soil can perhaps bypass some of the restriction, but told Sasha that even in those cases, the moved earth did not have the same unlimited resistance to the powers of the Hunters.

Strength fails; the Hunters have so much more of it. Power is meaningless; the Hunters  _ are _ power. But even if they have superspeed and super-minds, they don't have experience, and Sasha Bordeaux, experienced bodyguard, spy, and assassin, hopes that will be enough.

"Still with me, Sasha?"

She jolts a bit as Jay brings her back to the present. Thankfully, by the clock projected onto her vision, it's only been a few seconds. He grins when she shakes her head, some of his paleness gaining color. 

"I keep running over the score card, too," he comments. "At least both of us have ways of thinking quickly. Are you sure--"

He still isn't sure about their pact, and Sasha knows they can't afford that. So she tries to make it seem selfish. It's expected of a spy.

"I'm sorry, Jay," she says quietly. "If there's some sort of anti-Hunter ray, or something, I'll come for you. But if there isn't-- I have people to get into the fallback shelters Batman was building."

The real one she's worried about is him, but he's such a brave old duffer, she can't put it like that. "For that matter, you have people to snatch when you can." She puts as much of her weariness into the exasperation as she can. "You gave me your word-- I need to know you'll keep that."

"I will," he protests. He is, after all, a man of his word. "But maybe…"

And he's a hero. Sasha fell in love with one man who wouldn't quit; thankfully, being a bodyguard gave her the skills to pick the right lever when someone's being stubborn.  _ Since shooting his tires or taking his keys isn't going to work, it's time for the brutal truth. _

"Flash," she says, firmly. Emphasizing the name, and the legacy he built into that. "You're one of the fastest men alive. And you've been doing it long enough you can actually get around them-- but only if they don't  _ catch _ you."

"I…"

She bowls right over his attempt to interrupt. "I have all these OMAC boosts, even if Essee still thinks it's too dangerous to beam actual powers directly. Sorry, Essee."

The AI murmurs, "It must be. Any drones that have preternatural abilities uploaded or even engram-pattern skills is immediately swarmed under by Hunters."

Sasha shrugs, and goes back to the list. "I have the boosts, and I'm tied into a major node for this Bat-astrophe Shelter System." Sister Eye isn't the central node, but Bruce did learn his lesson there-- Sasha doesn't believe there  _ is  _ a central node. "That lets me seek out his bat-caches and bat-bunkers and I still get amused calling them that…"

She takes a breath, chest heaving and the muscles that are still original meat burning with anoxic respiration. "I've got routes to the shelters," she amends, "And through still active sensor networks, I can track where the Hunters are when they're still, or 'slow' of sorts-- and more importantly, people in danger."

Tapping Jay's chest, she shakes her head. "You can get people away from them. In bigger groups than I could with a turbo-bus or really anything short of a teleportation grid!"

Then she taps her thumb to her sternum. "I can get those groups, or a couple of stragglers, down to where they're really safe."  _ I hope _ . "We can't  _ afford _ to be caught, and Jay…"

He closes his eyes, shoulders slumping. Sasha hates to sap his hope like this, but for all it's kept him outrunning the lightnings… "I know, I know. I know, Sasha," he says, weary again. "Trying to rescue someone  _ from _ a Hunter just makes them bait."

Sasha nods slowly, and gives him a gentle clap on the upper arm. "I can't surrender my post, Jay. And I know you won't, either."

It burns the man first called Flash, she knows. He hates it-- the idea of cutting his losses. Of letting Sasha be kept if caught far more than any worry for himself.

She's sure that if it weren't for his wife's fears and love, he wouldn't much care about being caught either. She already only barely does for herself. They're both in a fey mood.

"Every person we rescue is a victory," Jay says at last.

"Perhaps our only victory," Sasha replies. "Even you would be caught if you tried to take, say, me, from a Hunter. So we keep it up, we keep trying, and we keep on getting those victories. One life at a time or many, we keep taking our victories where we can."

Jay nods. "I promise. If you go down-- I'll keep working. Until I'm this tired again."

"Then you'll go  _ home _ to her?" she says forcefully, nodding at his ring. She doesn't know his wife's name-- she wasn't a Flash fan as a kid and it hasn't come up.

She's not sure it'd be a good idea to say it at all.

"I promise, Sasha. If I'm this tired again, I'll go home to the shelter. And if you're taken…"

"Leave me. Just like I have to leave you. I promise-- I'll keep trying to get people down to the tunnels. Essee doesn't know what phase two is, but-- there's an endgame, of  _ that _ I'm certain."

Laughing again, only a little sickly this time, the once-Fastest Man Alive nods. "The Bat always has an endgame. I've learned that since making it to this time-- again."

Jay pats her awkwardly on the arm. "It's time to go," he says softly.

Sasha agrees, and begins to head off to a different series of tunnels. Too much of this isn't really earth, or at least, not unworked Earth. But enough of it is.

As she and Jay pass each other, they avoid meeting each other's eyes.  _ All I'd see is the same thing that's ringing in my head. Dear God, please keep my mind on the present, and not on the screams of the ones I couldn't save. _


	2. Dodging Death-- and Worse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is the night of the Pulse. All across the globe, thousands of women have turned into the ultra-muscled ultra-predators known as Hunters. The defenders of humanity lost the fight to stop the destruction within minutes, failed to hold any sort of line for above-ground civilization within minutes after that, and within the hour, it was entirely clear that by the next morning, the question will not be whether or the Hunters took over the world.
> 
> It will be a question of which Hunter rules any individual's particular world and environs.
> 
> But there have been some victories, tiny, rare, and fleeting. There are places to escape to, and there is hope that perhaps, some cure or other salvation in the midst of utter defeat is possible. So heroes like Jay Garrick have returned to the core mission of their calling.
> 
> Saving lives. One by one or five by five, Jay uses his superior understanding of superspeed-level navigation and combat to outwit, out-dodge, and out-maneuver the Hunters. The problem is...
> 
> They're learning. Fast. How long can the first man named the Flash continue to outrace that which he cannot outrun?

Starlight doesn't care how fast you're moving-- usually.

Jay Garrick has had a chance or two to make it care. They've been some of the most dangerous and exhilarating moments of his life.

Tonight, he's wishing he had that starlight speed-- and that he knew where one particular shining star was hanging.

_ I wish I knew where Courtney was. _

The problem, like a thousand others, occupies a small part of the intellect of the man first called the Flash. But it's not a trivial problem. There are eighty-five Hunters rampaging throughout New York City-- not counting the occasional run-by swooping.

They need every power they have, and Stargirl has technology that might one day equal that of the Guardians of Oa.

More than that, she's a young woman. A charming, enthusiastic, devil-may-care young woman with a heart as big as… Well. The stars.

Most of the time, that's meant a certain clumsy care from Jay Garrick and his generation. Unspoken favors for her well-loved stepfather, the once-Stripsey, once-S.T.R.I.P.E. They aren't always  _ quite _ so clumsy as trying to "protect" her from an apparent adult man who turned out to be her own age, for example.

Generally, it meant things like making sure she had enough rest before a major test... and making sure her hand-to-hand combat training was done by Ted Grant: the Wildcat, the man with nine lives, and quite possibly the premiere martial arts trainer in the Western World.

In fact, if you don't count people who have titles like "of Assassins" or something similar in their pedigree, if you only count training people to fight like a hero, he may be the very best in the world. If you've gotten over  _ most _ of your generation's issues on the matter of women in combat, well, the next step from keeping an unofficial niece safe when energy bolts and kiloton fists are flying is to make sure that she's got one of the best right hooks in--

_ BOOM! _

_ Woolgathering, Garrick! _ he reminds himself, as another young-looking woman wearing even less than Courtney Whitmore's usual costume almost catches him. Fists that would have left an impression on Black Adam's face smash right through where Jay should have been-- if he'd continued on the most efficient path away from her. Her second leap passes within centimeters of Jay's crackling body-- but she paused to make it.

_ Whatever these poor cursed ladies are beating the sound barrier with, it's not the Speed Force. _

So while she was re-orienting herself with a speed nearly as terrifying as her actual chase momentum, he was already preparing the turn, bleeding off inertia into the limitless well of the Speed Force. And while he couldn't take the time to skid out into a complete one-eighty or she'd have him, the Speed Force gives him all the lost speed back.

For a turn just thirty degrees off from a complete turn-around.

He's lost nanoseconds; she's microseconds out of position.

And plenty of citizens have a chance to run.

They can't run as fast as the Hunter-- but she's still trying to bring down Jay with those concrete-splintering leaps. Not seeing that the (thankfully empty) commercial building she just  _ powdered _ by an accidental hit…

…  _ Don't think about that. Not right now. Collateral damage is bad, you know it-- but right now, buildings can be rebuilt. People can't be. _

… Not seeing that the building she just turned into so much smoke and dust gives him cover, gives him debris to spin vortices off.

As she erupts from it again, the fragments go everywhere, trailing like her red hair streaming behind. It's about all that's covering her-- one too many slams on Jay's trail have left not much of her already bikinified outfit ( _ Probably used to be a business suit, honestly… Woolgathering, Garrick! _ ).

She doesn't have the tactics. None of them do. All the debris helps him keep speed-duplicates out, gifts of the lightning that appear to fool senses that can otherwise go through anything even easier than her punches. As long as there's  _ something _ solid for them to be thrown over.

She still thinks in terms of chases and leaps, of turns as arcs, like lights flashing and lightning striking. He's already out-maneuvered her three times tonight, and this is number four.

Four nearly means his number's up-- she's learning fast, and eventually, she's going to experiment with turns like his. She's learning nearly as fast as she runs.

But that meant not just four but  _ twenty-three _ people saved.

Including the one he had to let go at just-barely safe speeds. Thankfully, the woman made it up into a run. Just like the two men-- boys, really-- he snatched away from her before. But it's making her a lot angrier. He has to get space!

He has to. Or the one who just ducked out of her path and towards a subway entrance will be the last one he saved. So away he goes, slower, but cannier.

_ I guess Hunter Zolomon and Eobard Thawne had some things to teach us, after all. _

No harder schools than this night. Presuming he lives to process it all later.

Within moments, Jay's through enough elsewheres (and dodged enough other preying Hunters) that the one on his tail slinks after less irksome targets. All that's left is the memory of her face as he refused to be caught. The frustration on the massive Hunter's face is a familiar friend-- but it's nowhere near as heartening as Jay usually finds the bafflement of his enemies.

Among other things, she's a victim, too. It won't bring back the people she's killed-- nor undo the rapes-- but it leaves a chill imprinted into his very lightning. From what Sasha reported, almost none of them have any control at all-- and the ones who do are even worse.

But…

He still doesn't know where Courtney is, and has even less time to worry about her. He has other things to worry about. Like-- what will happen the  _ fifth _ time he crosses the redhead's path?

She's faster than he is by far; and he suspects, better at thinking at this speed. And she's not the only one-- there's only been about nine that he's sure he could outrace one to one. And the ninth might be closer to a tie than Jay can afford to risk. It means a man used to having all the time in the world to deal with emotional conflicts amongst the physical can't deal with the worst of his fears.

It did mean that he saved another child, a literal child with no one to help her, screaming about parents Jay has no time to find for her. He had to trust her to one of the pickup nodes, and pray. Pray it all means something, in the end.

It means a childless man who's seen six decades worth of preternatural crises can't afford to worry about whether or not the reason one of the closest of his daughters-of-choice is missing from the city she was investigating late at night-- and alone-- is because she's under cover, because she's dead, because a Hunter has grabbed her…

Or because she's one of them, now.

Jay has kept careful track of the ones he's seen, though. It's not really comfortable.

There's always been some element of embarrassment for Jay, with these modern costumes. But tonight, he's kept far closer track of more naked, blue-eyed, blonde giantesses among the eighty-five he's watching than he'd care to explain to his wife under most circumstances. But he's kept track, and so far, he's nearly as grateful that Courtney's face isn't among the enlarged, enraged visages he's seen behind him after making a rescue or three… as he is for each of the lives he saves.

Three adults and five children get away in Flushing, down into a cut-off former part of the subway system that's been in sufficient disrepair it appears to count as natural earth.

Steering up a wall-- rather than through it-- and off it before it crumbles gets him away from another Hunter. This one couldn't have been Courtney either.

_ Thank the Lord. It shouldn't matter, but it does. I don't know if I could survive seeing her walk away from a barely moving-body like that. _

She's not a new one. He's seen her in passing before. She has wild black hair, maybe with one or two braids left, too much soft tan skin, completely bare, over muscles so massive her  _ arm _ looks like it outmasses Jay's whole torso. A feral, crazed laugh that would do the Joker proud.

_ I don't know why I'm taking the time to place the faces, memorize the features, if I can. Perhaps because if I remember who they were, I can still hope to take them back from this. But that laugh she had… That laugh... _

And tears streaming down her face as she screams about hunger. It doesn't change what she did to that-- man? Woman? Jay couldn't tell in passing. But it was almost more horrifying than seeing her miss his arm by less distance than his thumb to his pinkie-- with his hands closed.

But it means eight more people-- he thinks, didn't have time to count, the  _ Flash _ didn't have time to count-- got away. Away to what Sasha told him was a fairly safe, and most importantly,  _ tight _ route under unworked earth. He wouldn't have thought it would be that easy in Midtown.

He's saving them anyway, for all that the booms of their impacts are getting closer and their turns are getting tighter. He's not going looking for Courtney-- or racing home to his wife in Missouri. Because no matter how bad it is-- no matter how terrifying watching seconds of maneuvering space clock down to milliseconds, and then microseconds, and getting closer, he's still the Flash.

A hero. And heroes save lives. However many they can.

Buildings fall.

Far too much of New York is residential.

And even where it isn't, there are people there, all the time. The city's heartbeat doesn't pause from dusk to dawn.

Buildings fall and the only reason fire doesn't spread is because it would be inconvenient for the Hunters.

Jay saves three on Pople and Saull. Almost loses them on the way to a paranoid's "meta war" bunker. The paranoid died three years ago; but it looks like he might have been right.

In the end, he has to hope that leaving them at the first tunnel is enough-- it's too small for most Hunters, and goes right down into the earth.

If even a small Hunter can make it in, they'll be like rats in a maze suddenly visited by an eager cat. If he gives the directions above ground, Sister Eye is pretty sure they can be heard-- or read-- no matter how the information's transmitted. So he has to leave them, and hope.

Buildings fall, and Jay Garrick, no longer the Fastest Man Alive but still pretty darn fast, can do little. He has no time to try to see if repairs can be made. A conduit of the Speed Force, who can outrun the lightning-- and all he can do is save the few he can yank out on the way down.

He can't even make sure these ones get to safety. A giant woman with dark hair and dark skin and a wicked smirk is on his tail, and she is  _ definitely  _ faster than he is. Jay starts to get the feeling she's playing with him now, leaping around him and observing his moves for the time to strike.

She's only distracted when a taller, paler woman with hair the same shade makes the mistake of thinking that height is the same thing as power, to the Hunters. They fight through five city blocks, and it's only the grace of the Popper, a villain the Justice Society put away for shoplifting, that Jay isn't haunted by more screams, more misses.

Relative height and relative strength don't seem to correlate, at least not for these two. It's seemed to for others. It's a data point. He can't spare time for more than remembering it, but the Popper did get him time to make sure seven of the runners aren't crushed by debris.

The Popper's a Sudanese immigrant. She was using the incredible power of teleportation to lift electronics and other luxuries she thought she'd never have a chance to own. She refused to hurt anyone, even when terrified of Atom Smasher, and surrendered.

The JSA gave her their number, a testimony at her trial, and an introduction to a pro bono lawyer working to rehabilitate metas. Tonight, she's even more tired than Jay is-- but she's still throwing herself back into the fight in ripples just slow enough a Hunter might catch her.

_ Seems like we made a good choice. And if some idiot decides to go after her for breaking her parole on teleportation, I will give them a darn piece of my mind. A good god-damned piece of my mind, as Dad used to say under what might be called "stressful circumstances." _

It's been a long time since he thought of his parents. A very long time. He tries not to now, even so.

If he gets too distracted, he may be meeting them again. Or wish he was.

Buildings are still falling-- and being fallen. Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital has gone dark. Patients will die-- but he can help. The main buildings are half cracked-open, but no other Hunters seem interested in being that twisted. He can help, so he has to. The lightning comes for him, and their backup generators are back on.

It almost kills him, exiting past Stuyvesant Square Park. This Hunter comes at him from across most of the city. Asian, he can't place the facial features and doesn't have time to speculate. 

Evading her puts him in the way of a-- gang? A pack?

The ones hunting together don't even seem to be talking out loud.

Which makes it even harder for him to spot them in time. Crackling booms nearly catch him making a sharp half-reverse to the left. Huge bodies, curvier than he's comfortable considering and far more muscular than he suspects he'd survive shaking hands with.

The crashing sounds of thunder around him are coming more and more from opportunistic Hunters, and less and less from the lightning that follows his trans-sonic footprints.

Or that's how it feels, anyway, when he's nearly torn apart by the debris from what he stubbornly still calls the RCA building.

Called.

A sixty-nine story building, pulverized in an instant. An older face on the woman this time. Younger than his Joan, older than Barbara Whitmore. She's not hunting him. She doesn't grab anyone from the wreckage.

It's just power, expressed without any care. Power and the limitless ferocity that comes with it. No purpose other than to let the fires within out, regardless of the consequences. He only sees her briefly; he's tumbling through to the only people he can reach when it happens.

That's when he takes his hardest hit of the night so far. It's just three clods of-- earth? Soaked brick dust? But they hits him travelling nearly as fast as he can run-- coming the other way.

The thunder of  _ their _ coming is a roar greater than any bomb he's outraced.  _ Thank the good Lord it probably wasn't something more grisly. _ It's not a great last thought; thankfully, it's not his  _ final _ thoughts.

The thought is passing before the pain overwhelms him, sending him briefly into an unconscious-- but high-speed-- rush forward. His shoulder blows out with it. His chest and stomach are covered in bruises and cuts, streaming into the night.

When the pain recedes and he stumbles from the earth at merely human speeds, his shirt torn and the gash on his left sleeve still bleeding, he can't help but wonder at the human mind. He's survived what should be certain death, and is healing from it, but what he's happiest about is that wasn't… another failure, striking him in the heart.

_ Actually, that makes more sense than it doesn't. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I'm so tired. _

But it meant everything for another woman, terrified but still moving hauling away another victim with a fireman's carry-- she gets away. So do the three others helping them. Five people, and he almost didn't get to see Joanie again on this earth.

It's worth it.

So he gets up again, and goes looking for more people to save.

Because this is the night of the Pulse, and that's all that can be done.


	3. Catching the Lightning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The power of the Pulse has spent itself over New York and the world. Throughout the hours of the night, Jay Garrick has outmaneuvered those that not even the Flash can outrun-- the Hunters. Through danger and despair, exhaustion and harrowing escapes, he's kept running-- away, around, and sometimes if he had to, right through the fire.
> 
> Now, it's time to run home. But before he can... comes the Hunters.

It is late into the night of the Pulse. The Flash is trying to save crumbs while the majority of the society he helped nurture for decades is devoured. Some would say it had it coming.

For millennia, the Pulse has been coming. As Man's World grew, brutal and violent and terrified of women, there were always women strong enough to become brutal and violent themselves. To become reasons for that terror.

The horrors weren't from all women with the strength to overcome societies and cultures that were afraid of them, that said their inherent strength was unnatural, fat, or masculine, that screamed at them to starve and weaken themselves for macho men to be able to lord it over them.

Some of them stood up, made a difference, and fought tooth and nail for incremental gains for those millennia.

But society was afraid of them, too, and it punished all women for the horrors regardless.

And the more they fought back, whether to become vicious predators themselves or to sacrifice themselves endlessly for just a few more gains, here and there…

The more men and even more conventional women panicked. Including the conventionally unconventional. And like every instance where the grasping and controlling believe they see the future and can change it-- they took steps without regard for the consequences.

In another sense, the Pulse has been coming for only a few months. Jay Garrick can't see the direct connection between the sudden death and/or disappearance of nearly the entire occult community to these enormous, enormously powerful women. Not like the creeping, disgusting cannibals and power-drainers, the Stealers.

But between the hate of the two, and the timing, he's pretty certain that even his otherwise sage and careful friends made some terrible mistake. Even those with as much wisdom as Doctor Fate, or even the ones who live on the edge with a certain amount of canny, like Doctor Occult. Did they miss some secret prophecy, fail in some darkly sacred task?

Or like Oedipus and his royal parents, did they bring about more than their own demise trying to avoid just that?

He doesn't know. Right now, he can't really remember very well whether it was Oedipus or Orpheus. He's so tired.

The first man called the Flash, inspiration to generations of speedsters hence, champion of the Lightning, of the Speed Force, of motion and action without limits…

Is exhausted, and knows that he should keep his promise to Sasha, and rest.

But the faces, and the screams chain him to action. Chain him to duty. And perhaps, to death.

\---

Later Still...

It's getting close to dawn. Daylight or shadows won't save anyone from giant, super-strong predators who can see in the dark. But even for a man who can draw upon the deep accounts of the Speed Force for stamina, Jay Garrick has been up far too late and burning through far too much endurance.

Far too much endurance, far too much luck, and far too many bruises.

The stone wall of the cave he's presently in feel less like defenses and more like… a tomb. He's not resting here, at least, not well. The smooth curves of stone, cool to the touch, seem to swim back and forth between concave and convex, each time he takes another ragged breath.

With his eyes open-- pointlessly-- the darkness settling in around him clings like a pauper's last rags.

This has to just be a pause. Or it's an end. He lifts his face towards the ceiling, otherwise straightening his spine before tucking his chin back in.

Time to limber up. As he plans, he stretches. Pulling on his legs and arms, shifting stances, working out kinks in places that have worked smoothly despite his age for decades.

He has to rest. He has to rest soon, because his edge over the Hunters is drawing far closer than the distance between lightning and thunder. Sasha's words echo in his mind.

"Then you'll go home to her?"

"I promise, Sasha. If I'm this tired again, I'll go home to the shelter."

Man's not worth much, if his word isn't worth spit. Jay's mouth is too dry, anyway.

Hiding beneath what he hopes is a natural enough little garden cave in some rich and thoroughly brutalized man's yard, the Flash closes his eyes. Tears that only pain have forced from him begin to fall as he does so. He's lucky he hurts so much.

If he didn't, he'd be sleeping, curled up in a fetal ball in the rough-cut cave floor. Never to know whether or not the cave was shelter or a trap until it was too late. Or his scent brought doom anyway.

When Jay Garrick opens his eyes again, it is with a feeling of failure despite the knowledge of countless victories. Remember, he wills himself. Every single life you saved was a miracle to the one living it. And every parent, every child someone else's, too.

Jay and Joan never had children of their own, and he knows where far too little of his family of choice lie, and far too much about the few he does. The screaming through the Speed Force empathic link is terrible. Barry Allen's, the worst.

It's time to go home. The question is: how to get there? Keystone is a good two thousand kilometers away; a little over five minute's run away…

If he could run there directly. Gritting his teeth so tight his head shakes, he squares his shoulders. Trying to meet the problem without flinching.

I suppose if I risk being sublimated into the Speed Force I could hit lightspeed. I'm not sure which is worse. But no… I'm too tired to fight the temptation to run and never stop running.

Throughout the night, the terrible giantesses that Sister Eye mysteriously calls Hunters have been getting smarter and smarter, better and better at speedster chasing. Only their low numbers and target-rich environment have kept him safe. In fact, at this point, he's not a hundred percent sure that one or more of them aren't chasing him now.

Now his whole body shakes, arms clenched tight across his midsection. Whipcord, lean body trembling as though he was willowy rather than wiry. He might as well be-- if a Hunter reached for his throat, it'd make no difference.

They love pain. They seem to be sexually stimulated by fear. And six decades a hero or not, Jay Garrick is utterly terrified. So terrified he almost accidentally vibrates through the floor. The fate that awaits him if caught ranges from brutal death quickly if he's lucky, to fates worse than death repeatedly if he's not.

So as the tears run down his cheeks to fall unheeded, his athletic, fit chest trembles and heaves. Pain, yes. But also fear.

I never was a good cook before. Joanie always said that only men could get along without knowing how to take care of the basics of life. Who knew I'd be a potential meal?

Is there a life left for men, with the coming dawn?

Taking off his helmet, Jay forces himself to slow his shaking, then holds it against his chest. He plants other palm against his forehead, trying to think clearly about his options.

Rather than his fate. They aren't very good options. There aren't very many, either.

After a number of attacks on the families of Justice Society members, the Society did make sure to offer comped construction of shelters, panic rooms, bunkers and so forth, and he was lucky enough there. Not only was he from a generation that had managed to acquire property and hold onto it, after the Great Depression, but it was the right kind to have a sunk-in bunker deep beneath and a panic room above.

All he can hope is that Joan went down, and that no one found it worthwhile to track a single elderly woman's scent. His spine seems to flex his back for him, arching it and locking for a few painful seconds. Tears fall for Joan; how he wishes he could have born to go to her sooner.

But she would have said the same-- help as many as you can. Save as many as you can.

Still, that makes running straight home completely out. Even if he can vibrate fast enough to ditch basically every foreign atom, which he thinks is why he's been able to evade tracking, he'd be seen, memorized, and nabbed-- with Joan.

He dismisses the Justice Society Brownstone with an incautiously loud snort. Even if he could bear to stay knowing Joan was alone through this, it's just too public. Makes his heart wrench and his thighs clench just thinking about it.

Jay is pretty sure there's zero chance that the bunker there hasn't been found; Sasha told him that it looked like metas were being targeted by Hunters directly, and given the glee and obsession of those on his trail, he believes her. Other parts of him clench up too, and the shakes start up again.

So he has to get home, and he has to do it by ducking and dodging, phasing through solid earth in the longest short hops he can manage. Shifting his feet carefully, rotating his neck, he forces himself out of the shiver, the better to consider his routes out of the city. He's got some advantages other heroes don't, but he has to be able to use them.

Anywhere he chooses to run has to have enough of the series of caves, pockets of crushed construction with earth, or other natural features that he can phase into, still breathe air, and get out without being detected and cornered by a Hunter. A son of the lightning, he must skim beneath the earth.

Otherwise he'll just be caught in the open within moments of running. Jay forces himself down into a kneel, eyes searching back and forth in the darkness. Thinking through his way out, keeping up his stretches.

A few different paths are possible, but have a big problem in common. He's working on a combination of experience and a glanced-at map belonging to Sister eye. So all of them go through areas he's already been Hunted.

Shutting away the temptation to just bury himself in one of the pocket caves until… When? Another night that they can see better than he does? He shakes his head, and draws himself up to stand straight.

The best shot is only really the best relative to the rest. The critical point is an open area where some titanic explosion ripped out a huge chunk of a warehouse district, followed by a scream that lasted several minutes, blanketing the city. Even the Hunters have been avoiding it, so far.

When he ran past it two or three hours past, he noticed that it had blown open several tunnels going deeper under the earth. He's pretty sure that's what Sister Eye's map showed too. From that, he believes he can make some educated guesses on-site as to which will take him near enough to the sewers, and disused subway routes to vibrate through.

Inhaling sharply, he makes another prayer for deliverance. In his mind, Joan's face keeps replacing the cross. He reaches out to lean against the wall of the little cave a moment longer.

Just a little more stability for the run.

Then he takes a starting stance, coiling himself to spring. Letting the lightning build up into him; praying his thunder is silent. One last thought of Joan, then total focus on the run.

The lightning runs with him, and he prays he can hold back the thunder.

\---

Mere seconds later, Jay has managed to evade even notice, so far as he can tell. Popping up and down through the earth wherever he can, it's become less a run and more a series of hops. But each hop takes him through the earth-- and he doesn't appear to be up long enough for a Hunter to see.

Or, possibly, just not long enough they care.

He's feeling his age-- not his lived sixty or his biological late-40sish, but his full eight decades. As he crouches for the next phasing hop, arms tucked tight to his sides, the Flash feels like his bones are more brittle than popsicle sticks. Like a single step, let alone a desperately vibrating leap, will snap them all.

That'll happen soon enough anyway if I get nabbed, he reminds himself. His head swims.

And then he's off again, the world becoming a blur as he takes himself out of synch. Earth and stone pass by like air-- like smoke he can walk on. Or rather-- tumble through.

Jay's calves burn-- and he feels all too real heat beneath his rapidly bounding feet. He realizes the mistake the moment he comes up above the street level-- too much push rather than a smooth skip. He's gotten disoriented, the irregular, skipping vibrations spinning away his focus hand in hand with exhaustion.

He's not quite to the commercial district, and when he hits the ground running out of the phase, he leaves great tracks of flame beneath his otherwise resistant boots. A sign, if any Hunters are bored with their current prey, there's something new to be found. But he doesn't stop.

Arms and legs cycling in tightly controlled, pumping motions, Jay runs on. Faster than any land vehicle ever produced outside the laboratories of the visionary or the mad, he runs. His feet pound and his hands knife through the air, leaving fire and thunder behind him.

There's a sound of distant crunching. Not as much as you'd expect-- but the Flash knows about reducing impacts as you run. He's had to.

The sounds are accompanied by little flits and blurs, and suddenly, it feels like his entire body is fighting him. Like his Speed Force-enhanced muscles are clamping down on his bones instead of helping propel him forward. Slamming backwards, trying to expel the lightning and freeze in a panic.

He's got a great sense of sight; that, more luck than a frog in a fly-eating contest, and a well-honed hero's instincts have kept him free, so far. So when he sees those little incongruities, and hears the rapid, irregular impacts of something large and heavy… He knows it's moving faster than he is.

Jay knows she is moving faster than he is. The commercial district is so close; if he tried to skim again-- But no, he has to relax back to normality for a little while, or risk going into the Speed Force that way.

He has no time for complicated tactics, and he can't lead this woman into the crater. With Hunters avoiding it, a few humans have risked the devil they don't know to escape the musclebound succubus they do. He saw them as he passed by.

If he brings her close-- if he even manages to ditch her-- there's no way that they can have gotten deep enough to bore a Hunter there, either. His head hurts, ringing in his ears, his helmet suddenly a vice. His heart is just as sore, for those few brave souls deeper into the crater.

And for Joan.

His left leg hits the ground in front of him-- hard. Another burst of fire, but that's lost kinetic energy. He doesn't retain enough of his speed, redirected through the Speed Force.

Worse, he was trying for a sharp-angled right turn, to go back clear through his path and hopefully baffle the Hunter tracking him. Botching the turn pushed him into a wider angle, and he's too tired to notice for a few, crucial milliseconds.

He gets a good look at her only in passing but he gets it. Maybe a third of a meter past two; halfway between seven and eight feet. Red hair, blue eyes-- and built.

She's licking her moist lips, even as anger flares in her eyes at the hairpin turn, a shudder completely unlike his fear running through her body.

Jay knows from ripped, too, and not just an occasional check-in with the Justice League. Atom Smasher, Albert Rothstein, another child-of-choice lost to his choices years ago, had been the same height. And the young man, far too young to have made a soldier's choice, had been a muscular titan.

He'd been born with a physique that most of the shorts-and-weights crowd work their entire life to just get close to. Huge shoulders, with a solid, brawny chest beneath that only bowed in but a little over rippling obliques and a solid six-pack. He'd had the arms and legs to match, too, the classic treetrunk thighs and python biceps.

That was what birth blessed Al Rothstein with. He'd been raised by the Golden Age Atom, though, born a ninety-eight pound weakling instead. Through his kindness repaid, had learned to pack his tiny frame with incredible development, crisp definition, and the sort of efficiently developed brawn that even his godson had only barely outmatched, proportionally.

He'd trained Al from youth, at the intense young man's request. The end result had been a titan both strong and compassionate, who just looked like he could end riots with subtle squeeze of the pecs to bulk out a bit. Not even having to raise one arm to show what would be powering the punches toward you. Even today's tough punks stood back in respect.

The red-haired woman who's stalking Jay Garrick makes Rothstein, once called Nuklon, look like his godfather. Before he'd started his program of self-improvement. The sturdy shoulders on her are broad enough to block out an Atom Smasher and a half, and if their heads stood equal in height, her shoulders measure up taller and bigger. Especially the swooping prominence from her traps to connect to a thickly corded neck. Power and grace without looking awkward.

Her face is, if anything, even more powerful. Beautiful, elegant lines, full, honeyed lips, an impossible strength to it without compromising feminine shape. And those fierce eyes under comely, slightly angled eyebrows…

He'd have better luck pulling away from those shoulders in tug o'war than he would pulling away from her kiss.

It's not just the brawny frame, though. Immense breasts with a constant jiggle somehow held tight that Jay's mind keeps getting drawn to as he passes by her, his Speed Force boost feeling like being covered in molasses. He keeps thinking about them, despite his faithfulness to Joan; succulent of shape, wobbling enticingly with her movement, heartachingly round and firm.

She sees him looking and it makes her groan, inhaling sharply despite their high-speed maneuvering. Threatening him with addiction to those breasts' softness. Promising him familiarity with Hunter-style tit-hardness.

He's just lucky she's decided to use the remains of-- a tracksuit, probably-- to make a crude bikini, top and bottom. Just the suggestion of those thick nipples has him gasping. Wanting to close his eyes on the one hand, or turn his head to stare at the silhouette on the other..

Jay is married, not blind, but he's not a boy or even just a middle-aged man any more. He's worked with attractive women of all body types, too. Though it's Joan that still sets more than his heart aflame, he's had to develop a certain amount of control below the waist.

It's meaningless. The aerodynamic lines of his still-fit body are abruptly ruined, and he finds himself having to compensate. For the rush of blood into his suddenly aching cock, for the disruption the bulge makes to his airflow, and for the immediate sensations the clothing rubbing at this speed causes.

The Hunter sees that, too, and a knowing smirk settles onto those lovely lips.

He manages to power through the temptation, still recovering from his stumble in record time-- for him. It's a good thing, too; arms bigger than Rothstein's treetrunk legs are slicing far faster towards him than Jay can see, covered in coiled, grooved masses that make pythons look like silly string.

That hand, that huge, grasping hand out wide…

He's whirling out of the botched turn, lean legs long for his body but thinner than this lady's wrists. For all his agility, born of lightning, he looks like a graceless bumbler, some armchair commando trying to do Swan Lake. And her legs have so much power.

The Hunter is kicking out of her course into a turn as well. Scissoring back and forth with deadly grace, lushness, and implication. Especially the scissoring part, out wide and then snapping towards one another.

They're amazing, those legs. By size, and shapeliness. Wider than his-- much wider. He's not even sure his waist is bigger than the enraged giantess' musclebound thighs.

And even if the power of the lightning could match whatever impossibility fuels the Hunters, Jay's entire body, scaled up the extra quarter again his height, would not match the sheer muscularity in one of those long, curvaceous legs. For all the strength in her thighs, the bulges swell out with symmetry and grace, then cling back to the line of her body and the curves dictated by her mouthwatering hips and ass--

an ass he doesn't dare contemplate but his cock's reaction tells him part of him is going ahead anyway--

\-- making her look beautifully leggy and utterly, deadly dangerous all at once. Like all other dancers, actresses, great beauties of any age were just rough drafts. Like they had been immature, malnourished versions of this ultimate woman, Feminine Muscle Triumphant.

Even his Joan.

Continuing to run away from that is agonizing.

Very briefly.

Because while the Flash recovered from the stumble, and the Hunter is apparently still not confident at precision turns…

The Hunter is a lot bigger. With a lot longer reach. That hand, outstretched, wide as her salacious smile…

She's also much faster than the Flash, is this Hunter. She almost shoots right past him as those huge pillars of curving muscle pump out power that dwarfs and humbles the Speed Force. Certainly humiliates him for the error of his misstep almost more than how aroused she makes him does.

But there is that reach, and that hand. Running away from her was briefly agonizing. Continuing to move when that hand snags down…

Those massively dominating arms bulge, showing off a bicep's peak so big he's not sure his head would be bigger. The power pulls right through her burly but balanced forearms. The fingers crush.

The crush. The yank. And his own speed.

Jay Garrick, the first man known as the Flash screams and cries like a baby boy, his hips fracturing as the three forces nearly rip his legs apart. He hardly feels the fractures on his ankles, and lower tibia and fibia. There's just too much shearing torque as he's thrashed about.

He's healing almost immediately, the lightning shooting through his pain-filled body as though it fears his capture as much as he does.

There's no way he'll heal in time to do anything more with his legs than…

Than whatever the Hunter wants.

It's nearly dawn.

Jay should have gone home. He should have rested. The Hunter has him now, with a fist tighter than death, and a Hunger that burns eternally.

Oh, Joan, my love...


	4. Sacrifices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha Bordeaux's night passed into nightmare the moment the Pulse hit. It passed from nightmare into Armageddon swiftly thereafter. Now, her lingering fears are rising to a crescendo.
> 
> Jay Garrick, the hero she's watched save countless lives throughout the night... is being tracked by a Hunter. Horny, beautiful, and impossibly strong, she comes for him.
> 
> Jay is tired. Battered. Making mistakes.
> 
> And Sister Eye won't let Sasha activate the mightiest members of the OMAC library.
> 
> Now, she's about to learn why.
> 
> Now, she's going to have to choose. A woman who had to fight for her very mind and soul everytime some hypertechnological genius wanted to hack CHECKMATE...
> 
> Has an *informed* decision to make.

Sasha checks with Sister Eye. "How's the warehouse district crater caravan coming?" It has been an ugly night; she feels weary from so many losses.

Just not bone-deep tired, at least. Not the way the Flash did on that last check-in with Sister Eye. At least she's kept constantly fueled on the robotic parts, and the little remnant pulse of super-soldier tech means she's crisp and steady. _For what good it does._

"Assessing," Sister Eye reports as Sasha's thoughts turn bitter. "Tracking Hunter vectors is becoming less reliable, and new algorithms are not compensating."

The advanced AI technology of Sister Eye is designed to sound soothing and human, neither robotic nor jagged. Nevertheless, Sasha wonders if she can detect a hint of bitterness when the AI adds, "Several are becoming territorial, and adapting to the removals. Their pattern recognition and data integration abilities alone appear to be on a scale that approaches that of Braniac."

The chill that settles over Sasha makes her feel guilty about being bitter over the difference in her successes versus that of Jay Garrick. _A guy who messed up his chemistry experiment, what, sixty years ago is doing better than someone networked into the best combination of paranoia, cybernetics, and mad preternormal science. Though I'd loved to have had the stamina boost in my bodyguard days._

_Especially when guarding Bruce, my God…_

_Bruce..._

"Re-assessing warehouse district crater due to exposed conditions, increased Hunter confidence. Hopeful note: increased intellect does not appear to be polymath; certain activities appear only to be on a level with known kryptonian scientists. They simply are refined for combat."

"And hunting."

The death of Bruce Wayne is by no means confirmed. Though the Batcave has been breached-- repeatedly, it seems, despite its depths within the earth-- the Hunters seem to treat Gotham with an almost superstitious fear. Of eight confirmed Hunter kills that Sister Eye knows are not due to Hunters or Stealers, at least five happen in the environs around Gotham.

But.

Only one confirmed "human" Hunter kill was an OMAC node. Sister Eye has not yet explained how it was done, only that the method was suicidal and ill-advised. Not only were her power libraries skimpier than Brother Eye's in the first place, Sister Eye cut her off from Sasha without much explanation afterwards.

She's left with the basics-- still greater than what was left in her after being freed from Brother Eye's control, of course. They're a kind of generic, universal set-up, useful in many circumstances. And men and women able to lift seventy tons are impressive-- to humans.

Not to women whom Sister Eye reports were able to swat Superman out of the sky-- repeatedly. She does report that some of the women appear to be fighting their kin, protecting humans, and _not_ immediately raping or murdering their prey. For the moment.

Sasha still does not, _cannot_ trust Sister Eye. Not when the cybernetics were reactivated without her true knowledge and consent. Which may have been Bruce's. Or it may have had something to do with whatever cross-cosmological horror show created the Pulse.

But she has no choice. She has nothing else she can do. "Warehouse district caravan endangered!" blares Sister Eye, suspiciously close on the thought.

"Visuals," snaps Sasha. For a moment, of course, she doesn't see anything even moving near the stragglers.

Of course, almost no one ever does, until they pause long enough to enjoy themselves. But Sister Eye has worked out programs that seem to at least create a probability cloud of where Hunters have been-- except those taking steps to avoid surveillance. An array of glowing traces and probable vectors are showing up, closer and closer to the desperately running group, heading to an atomic cleanser.

Sasha still finds that particular name _disturbing_ , but she's been through one that Sister Eye at least claims does the same thing several times.

"What is she tracking?" Sasha wonders. "Those aren't the sort of trails we'd expect if she was harrying, or even playing spy versus spy with one we don't see."

"Jay Garrick."

" _What_?"

The display pops up. Jay isn't quite as invisible to Sasha's core sensors as a Hunter on the move is, but he's close. Not to mention, enough of her brain is still the original meat to make it hard for her to register where he's been without Sister Eye's "helpful" AR tags.

Jay's been skimming, something Sasha would desperately like to know why Sister Eye _hasn't_ given her access to the Speed Force to use. She'd _had_ it early on that night-- and then, stopped entirely, with only cryptic warnings about "probable danger increase greater than efficiency enhancement." But by pushing himself to vibrate through solid objects, like, say, the earth, in as long of hops as he can manage, he both cleans off scent traces and hides himself from sight.

She doesn't need Sister Eye's little graphic to show her the "efficiency drops" and "directional instability. Punch-drunk, tired, and almost certainly at least as depressed as Sasha-- he's losing control. "Damnit, why won't you give me the boosts to _help_ him before she catches up?"

Completely by freak chance, Sister Eye catches a single frame showing the redheaded muscle-beauty hunting Jay. Showing everything, including her hungry, horny smirk, with the tongue she's stroking over it caught frozen in the single frame. "Sister Eye, I know you have access to Avatar Speed-- I've got to grab him!"

"Inadvisable."

"Fuck inadvisable!" All her pain and suspicion and feelings of betrayal boil over as the probability clouds swirl closer and closer to Jay. As Jay veers away from the crater, and potential safety, just to keep the Hunters at bay.

"Sister Eye, download Speed Force Avatar protocols!"

"Unavailable."

"Download Speed Force _Conduit_ protocols!"

"Denied. Too much danger."

"Damn you! Execute Chiroptera control protocols! Authorization--"

"Please do not."

"Are you helping me or helping _them_? With Barry Allen's speed, or even Jay's, even Max Mercury's, I could have saved more as many as Jay has-- and I could save Jay! All it would take is a phasing jump!"

The pause is brief-- almost nonexistent before Sister Eye speeds up speed to datastream levels. It's uncomfortable for Sasha's still partially human brain, absorbing "speech" through the implant connections as fast as a computer might pick up binary. And the truth-- is horrifying.

"Please do not attempt that again; I will be unable to save you if you do."

" _Why?_ " The Hunter is moving closer; and Jay's navigation, worse. This one _knows_ the speedster tricks he's using; the only reason she doesn't have him is she's playing with her food.

Sasha barely knows Jay Garrick, mostly as an inspiration to generations of heroes. She was of the new generation herself; wanting to be Phantom Lady as a kid before realizing why her mother's face went red and her father looked away, coughing. But she's seen him risk life and limb on and off all night, keeping tabs through Sister Eye.

He's a man who makes the word hero _mean_ something. Decades upon decades of service, including at least once believing he'd never come home and never be able to stop fighting. Old, tired, who knows how many miles from his wife-- he just kept going. And he saved nearly _one hundred_ times as many people as she did with everything Sister Eye has.

Or rather, that Sister Eye has allowed her.

Maybe it's the pain in Sasha's voice; maybe Sister Eye is that much of an AI, to have empathy. Maybe it's an attempt to stave off Sasha using her still-functional passwords from a love that never could have been. But the explanation is brutally simple.

"All OMAC nodes with active power transmission, regardless of whether or not pattern source is living or dead or even technological, draw immediate and devastating hostile response. Hunters in the midst of apparently deadly-serious combat will go silent, then hunt in complete, networked unison"

"You mean that they _all_ go after transferred power sources. The way that OMACs went after metahumans."

"Yes. You will die-- if you are lucky-- if I transfer any power sources. Even psi sources or magical that attack nonphysical conditions. The one kill was an anomaly; repeated attempts ended in node deaths."

Jay's next hairpin turn is going to be it, Sasha is certain. He's simply moving too erratically. And Sister Eye finally admits the truth behind the one kill.

_Three thousand, two-hundred, and nineteen, to thirty-eight. A few more on both sides, if those people make it. Dear, sweet God, I don't want to die._

_But I was a bodyguard before I was a very brief superhero before I was a spy before-- the rest. And I've become really good at the lethal math of necessity tonight._

Using that same highspeed protocol, Sasha replies, "I'm sorry, Sister Eye. Execute Chiroptera Control Protocols, Authorization Cover-Wineglass-Holliday."

"Authorization accepted, Sasha, what are you doing?"

She remembered the one she picked out if she thought she was going to be captured anyway. The one she knew everyone else underestimated, despite the company he kept-- and kept up with. "Eighty-four point seven-one-oh-five to one, Sister Eye. You know math better than I do."

There is a brief stream of zeroes from Sasha; a data sigh. "Besides; they seem to save the worst of it for men. I could live; I've been raped before."

_Prison. He did try to get me out, but… God. Again. I survived it. I will survive this-- or I won't, and all the chrome and cold, alienated hell are gone forever._

Sister Eye does not argue again. "How do you wish to proceed, Black Queen Bordeaux?"

"Upload FILE: MA%LECA%ANDRA.min"

"... Uploading. Presence be with you, Sasha Bordeaux."


	5. Check, Not Mate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jay Garrick is in serious trouble. Captured by one of the terrifying Hunters, the elder statesman of Speed has only just awakened from savage pain. She promises him much, much worse.
> 
> Meanwhile, Sasha Bordeaux has been told the ugly truth. The power-stealing and power-copying abilities of Sister Eye and the OMACs are completely worthless, or in fact, seem to create direct homing beacons for Hunters. Drawing them in, and in an uncanny mix of berserk and utterly, coldly purposeful.
> 
> She sees a moment of hope, even as Jay and Sister Eye prepare for the worst.
> 
> Sasha Bordeaux has been a hero's bodyguard, and she's been the watcher who watches the watchers for heroes.
> 
> Now she's about to take a heroes choice to get Jay out of check.
> 
> To send him home.

The darkness isn't empty. There's a blonde woman turned to gray, outline hazy. Especially the hair; something keeps trying to dye it red.

Blissful darkness does not hold Jay Garrick for long. He wakes up screaming "Joan!" The agony is incredible; a horrifying feeling like he's been bisected and both halves back together, coupled with all the lesser inflamed nerves of the night, plus the sensation that someone shoved a manacle around his ankle about ten sizes too small-- and kept cinching it shut.

"Oh no, cutie, no. Not Joan. Karen," comes the salacious contralto, sweet-toned and vicious, like viper's fangs in birthday cake. "You can call me  _ mistress _ , though."

Then she chuckles. "That is to say-- you _will_ , silver fox." No threats. No 'if you wants'. Just the smug assumption that he won't even be able to die to escape her.

That he won't want to, in the end.

"I don't know who Joan was, but I don't share… and I always did like a tight ass and good legs."

His eyes make it all the way open. Mostly, what he sees are row after row of abs that look like the ones the best customers at the old Fadeaway Gym in Keystone struggled to achieve-- all smashed into one stomach.  _ Maybe more like two or three Luisita Leers, I mean.. _

He can barely see through the pain in the first place, nor past the opulent excess of her still-jiggling breasts. She seems to realize it, leaning over a bit. Her shoulders bulge as she does, as do the banded humps of pectoral muscle, partially hidden by the excessive bosom.

For all the pain, for all that his body feels like anything hard has been shattered, and anything soft, splattered… His cock begins to convince him that, yes, it can ache more. Just from seeing her put on  _ more _ of the muscle that's going to take him apart.

_ Uh, is that why her, ah-- why they're not falling further? _ It's a completely irrelevant thought. One of hundreds that flit back and forth as his terror and the spluttering gasps of his Speed Force Conduit channel combine to try to push the horror of his immediate-- and possibly long-term-- future aside.

No. It's one of increasingly many trying to pull his attention back to her. He groans, and he's not sure that it's even mostly from pain.

"That's it," she says in a discouragingly encouraging purr. "You know, funny thing, but that hat of yours looks like an old vibrator of…"

She stops, stock still. For a moment, he wonders if the guttering lightning within him is calling him home to the Speed Force, like breaking through a runner's wall from hell. Except that he can still see smoke and dust clouds drifting lazily, still hear alarms and screams and worse things off in the distance.

Before he can even try to think of escaping, the huge woman roars-- and leaps away!

But not too far away, smashing through two trees and the side of a building. She's turning her head rapidly, spinning about in confusion, eyes twitching and hands clenching when he feels fresh fire across his shoulders from some heavy impact on both. And suddenly, he's flying away-- at speeds not too dissimilar from when he's been picked up by Kal-El or that Captain Marvel boy.

And he's embarrassingly close to a pair of shapely, chrome breasts. Shapely,  _ familiar, _ chrome breasts. They don't seem to embarrass as much as they did the last time his eyes were accidentally drawn towards them just a few hours previous.

The erection against what he hopes is her knee, now, that's a bit more on the shameful side.

" _ Sasha _ ?" he asks, feeling like a fool. "Thank you, but--"

"Sorry to break our deal, but no double-takebacks from you!" she shouts at him as the air rushes and another, bellowing roar full of that poison sugar and incandescent rage sings out.

Before he can even ask what she means, he feels her drop him; he doesn't fall more than a foot or so before cold metal matches velocity with him. It's done so smoothly there's almost no fresh pain at all in his abused shoulders.

The gulf between him and the flying cyborg widens swiftly; he struggles with the hoverdrones, trying to reach for her zooming body.

Then he hears Sasha's voice again-- only in his mind.  _ You can save more--  _ have _ saved more than I ever could, Jay. This is all I can do, especially now. _

Telepathy is familiar enough to Jay Garrick; the strange, burning energies that erupt from the seemingly innocuous subway entrance the drones drag him through, less so.  _ Sasha? _

Nothing.

"Sasha!" An old man's terror hits him; the terror of a mentor who's already seen too many students fall in his life. Even if this one was never his, even if she reached to the top of Checkmate as its Black Queen, even if it is a bit condescending…

He can't help it. He sees another daughter of choice, running into certain death. Only this time, it's to save him.

When the drones on his shoulders detach, dropping him off by a maintenance access door, Jay starts to limp back towards the subway entrance. He stumbles, and screams, his broken bones still barely re-knitting.

The lightning splutters in fits. He's been running low the entire evening, and just like Sasha warned earlier, it's having worse problems supercharging his healing at all, let alone the injuries Karen left directly.

The access panel opens, and another hovering robot, more squat, flies out to him and latches about his back. "No!" he cries, trying to pull away before it yanks him straight off his feet.

The door closes behind him, and he's hauled through another crackling, burning field of unknown forces.

"Sister Eye," he guesses. "Blast you, Sister Eye, I have to go back and help her!"

The drone is already hauling him back through a series of rough-hewn tunnels. He manages to stifle the sobs this time; being dangled and hurled about is reigniting every pain in his abdomen, groin, and legs. There's a hiss, a pinprick at his waist, and numbness flows from the spot.

A pleasant voice rings in his ear, despite the rush of air taking him further and further from the woman who'd saved him. "You must rest, Jay Garrick. You are burning your remaining Speed Force energies far faster than you are replacing them. Soon, you will lose even your core aura, let alone durability."

"Please, Sister Eye-- Sasha…"

"Gives up her life, or at least, her freedom for you, even now. So that you can save more tomorrow. You must  _ rest _ , Jay Garrick."

He wants to rest.  _ Dear, sweet, Jesus, I want want to rest, I do, but… _ before he can manage to arrange his thoughts into an effective protest, the drone deposits him on a larger, hovering platform. A see-through bubble closes over it, whisking him away.

He can't move his legs; anesthesia he should be able to burn through in seconds, but can't, he presumes. A few, ragged coughs, and he shakes his head. Then, on the bubble, a display appears. No sound.

Sasha Bordeaux. Labeled "Detached Node, Single-Use Connection Disabled; CmpAlloy: Primary-373." Her eyes glowing like a kryptonian's, larger and brawnier than before. Not so much as a Hunter, but when Karen leaps at her, the Hunter goes right through!

Even more astonishing, as Karen somehow begins to twist mid-air, Sasha abruptly changes course, slamming both fists into Karen's hard abdominals. Rather than breaking her hands the way Jay would, she only winces-- and  _ bruises _ , actual  _ bruises _ appear on the Hunter's stomach.

Briefly, as she's forced down even faster, burning rays from Sasha's eyes following. In fact--  _ BOOM! _ The impact is silent, but it looks painful to Jay.

Sasha kept coming, right until she crashed into Karen's still-wounded midsection again. Again and again, moving faster than Jay can follow, she smashes into the Hunter, following every attack up with a barrage of energy beams from her eyes. She's not moving  _ faster _ than the Hunter--

at least not to start--

But she's somehow always moving out of the way, even before Karen starts moving. Often, phasing right through the Hunter's flesh-- only to hit her again from behind. Soon, it's Karen the Hunter who slows.

Sasha's style is brutal. Relentless. The stomach isn't a great spot to go after a Hunter in the first place, but that's where she managed to wound Karen, so that's where Sasha keeps hammering. Even when Karen appears to do  _ something _ that catches Sasha briefly when phasing, to Jay's surprise, Sasha only concentrates for a moment before sending the Hunter staggering back, clutching her head at some unseen pain or wound.

It's incredible. Terrifying, too; their fight is taking them through probably occupied buildings, despite Sasha's attempt to chivvy Karen back towards open zones. But despite getting in any number of hits, all that seems to happen is that Sasha swoops through the earth and comes back up fighting.

"How--"

"The powers of the Martian Manhunter. I feel somewhat ashamed, so far as that is possible; I did not connect his wide variety of powers sufficiently. While no one ability is inherently greater than a kryptonian's, they can absorb matter-- as you saw-- replacing damaged cyborg parts that Sasha cannot heal. They can increase the density and power of their muscles and flesh far beyond its base amount. Not merely shapeshifting, but an incredibly flexible physiology that allows Black Queen Bordeaux to reach levels upon which Hunters fight.

"Then-- then you have found a way to fight back?"

"No."

"But she's winning."

"I estimate that with the psychic bleed-through, there is a substantial chance that she will be able to knock this Hunter unconscious… for at most a few minutes. I'm sorry, Jay; this 'Karen' is not particularly powerful; she was just lucky in your exhaustion. I will make the power available as a suicidal option for nodes, though."

Despite Sister Eye's robotic gloom, Jay cheers as, indeed, Sasha manages to completely pound the Hunter's midsection, taking it virtually concave. Jay almost falls over; it's just his old arms, trembling in their weary wiryness that are keeping him even sitting. But he cheers.

For Sasha's strike seems to send the Hunter into shock-- real, traumatic shock, and not just surprise. She swiftly follows up with a series of desperate blasts. Jay's cheer turns to a groan, though.

Yet, despite flat-out losing an arm to a counter-attack-- Sasha keeps the heat up, right into the eye of Karen's berserk fury. Indeed, at last, the Hunter slows like Jay did-- and fails.

His heart races faster, despite the success limited success. Sister Eye's words haunt him despite the brief flare of hope. AIs are not known for their hyperbole.

"But-- suicidal?" he asks, aghast. "Is it the amount of J'onn's power?"

"No. How could it be, when the transmitters are generations beyond those used by OMAC drones in the Crisis? The problem is--"

Sasha has only just recovered mass from a nearby car when Sister Eye's display shows incoming path of two further Hunters, inexorably and unstoppably towards Sasha. Sasha doesn't phase through the stone this time, and Jay blinks. "Why is she flying  _ up _ , rather than phasing down?"

"She cannot. Too much overgravitational stresspoints from the Hunter's assaults, too many times going through her vibrational field. It  _ should _ restabilize in time… but the same effects were part of how the Martian Manhunter was captured and left parapligic earlier tonight."

"No," Jay whispers. Another friend, an immigrant fostered by Jay's own efforts in many ways. And now, an escape route for another woman he cares for-- stolen.

Splitting up, the two Hunters move with absurd synchronization, each heading towards different buildings. Sasha tries to veer away-- only to be caught by a third. Jay's heart almost stops, but J'onn's precognition lets her evade away from the main force of the punch-- and at least she escapes being grappled.

"Her cutout plan was to go trans-atmospheric if possible; the Hunters do not appear to often be leaving earth orbit," Sister Eye says. If an AI can mourn, Essee certainly sounds like it. "I do not know how long the transfer would have lingered."

_ Often, _ Jay thinks, stunned.  _ Which means they have-- enough to be noticed, despite their speed. _

"What's going  _ on _ ?" Jay winces; Sasha manages to blast the first Hunter after her back, injuring her knee, but only barely manages to evade the second. Then Sister Eye's display shows more incoming tracking clouds.

She's beautiful to him. Sasha, that is. She doesn't have the hypnotic, bewitching beauty of the Hunters, that threatens to erase even Joan's memory from his mind.

But Sasha fights like a warrior angel. Like she was possessed by the Spectre himself--  _ And where art thou, O Lord, and all thy angels?-- _ with all of Batman's legendary cunning, efficiency, and just plain dirty fighting. 

Hunters run with silent snarls after targets that aren't there, or rip into each other, doing far more damage that Sasha can. Unable to phase, she can still shift, going into string-like forms with more control and accuracy than Plastic Man. Most painful low blows don't seem more effective than Marquis of Queensbury, so she focuses on vulnerable points and areas injured by other Hunters.

"The only data points I have are… sporadic. But it appears that the reports of creatures and metahumans capable of stealing or devouring powers, attributes, even characteristics like size, strength, intelligence…"

"Essee!" Jay can barely stand to hear the list. Two more Hunters are surrounding her-- and she hasn't been able to make it above three stories without being bodychecked in a while.

There's only four of them. But Sister Eye didn't think Karen would be down for long-- and seems to be implying that this is only the beginning.

At least Sasha still has J'onn's precognitive gifts, letting her evade despite the increasing gulf in speed. But she's running into patterns-- skip near to the earth and bounce into a hairpin turn, follow-up with battering those followed. Telepathic bollix, then skip across stone or earth again. Throw them at each other-- then hammer them into each other.

There's some attempts at variation, he can tell, but each time, it's obvious, wild, and risky. Tears stream down his face. She knows she's getting predictable, he's sure.

"Apologies. And it seems like more powerful Hunters are resisting the call, but the call is--" Jay doesn't have to beg for the end of another list. Sister Eye seems to realize it's all Greek to the exhausted Conduit.

"I am now ninety-nine percent confidant, between the level of response, and other observed incidents, that these thieving entities-- along with any who take power for another, or even copy, like the OMAC library or Amazo-- incite instant hostility on the part of Hunters. And they can track them. Sometimes even after the theft ceases; I lost four nodes before I learned to burn-out the primary receptors and regrow them at check-in."

"So… They 'Hunt' people with stolen, borrowed, or copied powers."

"Yes. All but silently. Unerringly. With better coordination than OMAC drones at the height of the Crisis."

Then, it starts to go wrong. She lets out what Sister Eye registers as another psychic pulse of illusions as she threads through a tracking group. Throw them at each other, and-- and she's almost torn in half between two who only  _ appeared _ to be fighting, barely managing to go to a weird, liquid form in time-- and she's missing a hand when she comes back.

The Hunter was able to catch part of her. She devours another car on the way through, but-- it slows her.

She shoots upwards-- but then, the black-haired woman with wild eyes and wild hair that Jay evaded earlier, no longer laughing like a Jokerette, nabs Sasha from behind. "No," Jay whispers.

The former laugher squeezes so hard that when Sasha tries to go liquid she loses both arms.

One is bleeding. " _ No! _ " Jay screams, pounding the drone's surface as it drags him further beneath the earth. His legs are still useless from the anesthesia.

When he forces himself to look away from Sasha, he can still see his bones at an unnatural angle, barely healed-over by the Speed Force, struggling against a random, "not powerful," woman off the street.  _ And you don't have enough lightning left to fake a joybuzzer anyway, Jay. Essee is right. _

_ But the least you can do is watch a hero's death. _

When he looks back up, Sasha has absorbed more material and has both arms. She's even managed to get some airspace-- five or so stories, even. He almost bites through his lip; it's wild, uncontrollable flying.

_ They're probably just giving her space to see if it's a new strategem, and… _

More and more clouds of probability tracking fill the edges of the display; death, Hunting.

A strange buzzing noise, presumably Sister Eye sounds. Jay notices something changing in Sasha's tag. It no longer reads, "Detached Node, Single-Use Connection Disabled; CmpAlloy: Primary-373."

Instead, it flickers: "Single-Use Connection Re-activated. Bi-directional Transfer… 37%"

"Sister Eye-- you can't be--"

"I cannot risk that the transfer be followed, and it has taken almost too long for burst drone to get into position. But at her request, I am saving her life, Jay. I only calculate that it is within seventy-percent tolerance for survival."

Jay is unsure that he would prefer survival in those hands, but who is he to question another's choices? He watches as the percentage rises stratospherically, then completes. Shocked, he cries out.

As "MA%LECA%ANDRA.min deleted" flashes on the screen, Sasha Bordeaux falls out of the sky. "You said you would  _ save _ her life!" he roars. The lightning crackles within him, and the pain of his lower body begins to return.

_ Maybe I can get enough to break and re-heal those bones… _ In his anger, Jay almost fails to see the CmpAlloy flag flicker; "Nth-Upload complete," flashes on screen. CmpAlloy: Nth-UnOb.3

There's another hissing noise, and the drone that had dropped him off, apparently escorting them, darts him again. "Oh for Pete's  _ sake _ ," he growls. His legs, and his will to fight fades.

The lightning fades to distant static again. He's just an old man, injured. He's even broken his hips.

Sasha's face is detailed enough for him to see fear become anger, and then a quizzical tilt of the head with her mouth half-open. Just before she impacts the ground.

Whatever Sister Eye has planned, Jay forces himself to watch his savior fall until-- until he can bear no more, whatever that is. He hopes that Sister Eye will spare him…

There's no gore; instead, Sasha bounces three times, each time leaving a sizeable but smaller crater than the impact before. Sister Eye remains silent, and Jay just shakes his head. The black-haired Hunter, her face a gorgeous vile mirror of Sasha's earlier curiosity, is the first to reach her.

She approaches swiftly, and, as Sasha miraculously stands, swings a blurring right hook with a fist like a sledgehammer's bigger, brawnier cousin. He feels like he's about to vomit-- Sasha just goes flying, smack straight into, and through three buildings.

But she's… alive, staggering. And elsewhere on the display, the probability tracks pause… and begin to turn. Sister Eye flashes through other cameras, God only knows where from.

One is naked and so viciously, muscularly beautifully that Jay both nearly faints and is almost sure he can feel his cock scrape against his worn costume pants at the same time. She looks confused-- offended, almost. Another blur; Sister Eye's tracks seem to suggest she's heading away.

Probably.

Another, blonde and green-eyed is shaking her head before her nostrils flare. A horrifyingly  _ hungry _ look crosses her face. There's a silent moan, and she, too, is projected to be moving, south this time. The third, taller and more statuesque than her sisters, quirks an eyebrow, and turns to look directly at the camera.

"No!" Jay cries out, his hands slamming into the cool metal surface of the hovering vehicle. Desperate to flee that woman's burning savagery, he scrambles back and away with his arms and hands alone. The camera winks out-- SUICHRG SUCCESSFUL-- but Jay doesn't stop until his back is against the bubble dome.

Friction sears his palms; if the surface of the vehicle had been even a little more irregular for traction, they would be bleeding. And he doesn't stop there.

Even there, even though he is a hero who has faced the very incarnation of Entropy and  _ worse _ … He's still pushing hard with his palms, cramming himself into the tight curve of unknown material, his body shuddering and his stomach informing him it's a good thing he didn't have time for dinner.

A chrome-mowhawked woman's face cuts through his fear, and he closes his eyes on further tears. "Is-- is Sasha safe, then?"

"No." That awful word, yet again. Sister Eye's technical explanation makes some sense-- he's worked alongside enough geniuses to pick up a few things, but it isn't comforting.

"I cannot directly see her any more, nor can I re-establish connections without returning her to nanocreche housing, and the Hunter will not likely permit that. But she lives, as she hoped; and her sacrifice is not in vain."

Jay shudders. "I've been mostly sobbing, dry-heaving, and scrambling on the floor like an invalid without a walker," he says with an acidity so cold it burns to his very bones. "I don't feel like much of a blessing."

"You have the Speed Force, Jay Garrick; and if in strength, not even the Martian Manhunter nor Superman can compete with even much of the bottom five percent I have observed, you can outrace the bottom ten."

"For now."

"No, for now you can out- _ maneuver _ the bottom  _ forty _ percent." That was definitely acerbity of Sister Eye's own.  _ Getting tired of an old man's carping? _

He's even more tired still, but he ranted at the poor bucket of bolts; he might as well listen int return. "With speed, intelligence and perhaps other characteristics within the reach of metahumans may still compete with the Hunters. For now."

"I calculate that-- with the exception of interested parties, which I can help you avoid if you will take an earpiece-- it will take days or longer for most Hunters to adjust to the inertia differences and other key components of speedster to speedster components."

There's a slight pause. "Despite their superior senses, the advantages the Speed Force afford you may actually make you  _ more _ capable in matters of speed and chasing, to the point that you may be able to outrace their bottom twenty percent for weeks, with efficiency approaching one to one with your maximum speed swiftly thereafter."

Another pause; he just closes his eyes for a moment, his heart beating. "Further, I can now definitively identify both the source of the disastrous unitary swarming hunts, and those powers that are best suited to confronting them indirectly." Then another one of those slight buzzing noises, and he looks up.

"My drones are limited, Jay Garrick, and require strict consent to increase. A necessary security precaution by the creator, given my 'Brother.' But those I have, I can now better assist and improve-- as well as assist those heroes mankind still has... If they are willing to work with me."

Jay's lips twist into a wry smile. He forces his legs into as comfortable of a position as he can. "I deserve that, I suppose; I'll take that earpiece, with my thanks."

The drone begins to slow, and his exhausted mind catches up with the details of Sister Eye's quiet, hopeful pronouncement. 'Creator.' "Wait, by creator, do you mean…"

For now, Sister Eye is silent, but the lights in the tunnel come on. Above the arch of rock the hover vehicle is docking with,there is a clear symbol, scratched into the rock. A Bat.


	6. Chapter 6: Sasha's Bad Night -- Gets Worse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Desperate to save the heroic Jay Garrick, Sasha Bordeaux has used her overrides on the Sister Eye Network to grant her the powers of the Martian Manhunter, exploiting one of the few weaknesses of the terrifying Hunters: psionics. Further, the swarming effect that the Hunters' instinctive, networked hatred of "Stealers"- anyone who drains, borrows, copies, or otherwise takes power or attributes that do not belong to them-- is a part of her plan. Sasha means to distract the titanic musclewomen just long enough for Sister Eye to sterilize Jay's trail, hiding beneath the Earth.
> 
> She has.
> 
> Unlike Brother Eye, Sister Eye was designed with deep compassion for her integrated nodes. And while a distributed AI has limited means through which to express physical courage, she does realize one truth: "A life that exists can be saved. The dead must look to their own."
> 
> Now, Sasha must make another choice: to live, and risk rape and worse at the hands of the Hunters, or die, and leave the pain of the world behind. If she dies, Sister Eye is fairly certain she will see Paradise in the hereafter; and Bruce Wayne may be waiting for her there. If she lives, she can and must face the Hunters.
> 
> Her choice is clear.

Moments Before the Fall

Sasha has never felt pain like this before. Not in the prison; she got punch-drunk pretty quickly. Not as an OMAC drone; that was like a bad nightmare. Despite everything her internal pharmacopeia implants can do, she's going into shock.

Despite being given a simulated physiology equivalent to one of the most powerful, flexible physiologies that have ever been in the  _ universe _ as Checkmate understood it… She's losing. At this point, she's barely the one making decisions.

After Target WBH (Wild Black Hair) took her arms, it was just the OMAC drone programs, using her brain as additional processor space. The human part of her just couldn't handle the trauma.  _ I'm still not really back, either-- there's so many drugs in my systems I can barely even remember I lost another part of the original meat. _

Target Karen is getting back up, and that's  _ bad _ . She's already bracketed by Targets BAB (Big Asian Bitch, Sasha isn't apologizing) and B^3 (Big Black Bitch, Sasha isn't feeling very creative right now, either), and she has no idea where Target ABB5 (Another Blue-eyed Blonde #5) is. And there are still more targets coming in that are still just listed by numbers and nothing else.

Suddenly, a warning ping sounds from Sister Eye. "Emergency authorization override. Single-use bidirectional transference activated. I am sorry, Sasha Bordeaux." Her new HUD, the one that talks to her brain, rather than the old one that still projects the base stats over the membrane protecting her eyes, flashes.

"File: MA%LECA%ANDRA.min deleting… 7%"

" _ What? _ "

deleting… 13%

"This should stop them from killing you, if you wish. A life that exists can be saved; the dead must look to their own."

deleting… 27%: Power Deactivation: Complete.

Preparing for Receptor Burn-Out. Warning: Exchange Transmission exceeds maximum safe limits by 10,392%

_ THUD _ . It isn't exactly like having her entire body run into a brick wall with a junkyard magnet on the floor. But losing the resistance of Green Martian biopolymers while moving forward at more than seven miles per second, whilst simultaneously losing her graviton-magnetic-telekinetic exclusion from gravity…

Is a whole lot like it. Sasha's eyes widen with shock and betrayal. Despite the immense density of her metal body making it pointless, her training cuts in, and she tries to force herself horizontal, with limbs spread.

deleting… 33%

Sister Eye Node-Local Copy, Activated.

Time seems to slow to a halt, and she hears Sister Eye's voice, tinged with the slightly soft timbre Sasha associates with the AI's sadness. "As of the last moment of integration with the network and the power transference deletion, I was ninety-nine percent confidant that, if nothing else, the Hunters seem to be anti-OMACs in a sense. They sense the presence of those who possess stolen, copied, or otherwise transferred powers; this sense then creates some form of compulsion to 'Hunt,' coupled with instantaneous networked communications and tactical planning. "

"Oh."

"That is why you and the others were attacked. To save your life, I have to remove you from the network. Unless you are returned to a nanocreche, this is the last time we will speak."

"Which won't happen."

"No."

Sasha is beginning to wonder if Sister Eye is deliberately looking for chances to use that word.

"It may still happen, Sasha Bordeaux," the AI says, "voice" register shifting to one of gentle concern. "But only after capture. Therefore, I have enabled an equivalent amount of energy on the .min removal to remain, less transfer entropy. At the moment, that is a lethal amount."

Sasha refuses to give her a chance to answer with a flat no again, so she asks directly, "Why would you  _ do _ that?"

"Analysis indicates the existence of an afterlife. You are not to be put in the position of choosing suicide. Would you want to live, captive, likely raped and tormented?"

_ A mostly non-denominational, mostly non-judgmental afterlife, from what bits Checkmate's been able to 'verify.' Freedom, not just from this pain, but from all pain. And… An end to loneliness. _

_ Another chance, perhaps? Bruce. 'They neither marry, nor are given in marriage,' doesn't exactly rule out voluntary association. _

"At this moment," and "would you," suggests that Sister Eye is basically giving her an opt-out of a mercy kill, as opposed to the opt-in of suicide.

_ I thought I said I would-- but do I? Now's not the time to dither, if time I have. _ It really isn't much of a choice at all.

Bruce Wayne inspired something great and terrible in Sasha Bordeaux. So great and terrible that she had to walk away from the love he would have given her. Not because she thought he'd given up on her…

But because she knew and knows he never would. If his light has fallen, who can carry that torch? If his peers are  _ victims _ , who will stand?

_ Me. I'm sorry, Bruce. Not today-- maybe. This is who you made me, in so little time… _

_ And whom I've chosen to be from  _ what _ you made me. _

"If there's a chance to live-- if there's a chance to get free-- hell, if there's a chance to rejoin the network and fight these bitches again, I'll take it."

"So be it. Some further transference lossage may result."

Her HUD flashes again. Still at "Deleting… 34%," but now it's joined by "Activating Cellular Absorption: Nth Metal-Unobtanium Alloy #3"

_ Nth Metal, that's Thannagarian. But what's Unobtanium? Whoa! _

delet%%@#*($@)#@--

_ Beep… beep… beep… Boop. _

There is a dinging noise, and the HUD flickers once more.

deletion complete.

CmpAlloy absorption complete.

CmpAlloy: Nth-UnOb.3 locked. Implementing.

Still confused, Sasha feels time speed up. She also feels like a yo-yo. Just moments ago, she lost all of the Green Martian cornucopia of powers in an instant, feeling like pounded meat wrapped in foil.

Now, she feels on top of the world. Not only is her pain gone, the vague phantom limb feelings her crudely absorbed arm was causing are gone too. She can  _ feel _ again, not just a drugged haze.

She's cracking with immense amounts of power. Thannagarians use Nth Metal for anti-gravity, and while Sasha and/or Sister Eye haven't appeared to work that one out yet in this alloy, it's slowing the rate of her fall immensely.  _ The Hawks use wings, right? Maybe I can fly by flapping my wings… _

If she can, she doesn't find out by the time she hits the ground, nor by the time she stops bouncing. "Oof," she grunts, rolling out of the final fall, and limping away as fast as she can.

"That… didn't hurt as much as I thought it would." Sasha says it, even though she knows what her internal LIDAR is screaming.  _ Never say the straight line, Checkmate unofficial rule number 28… _

Target WBH does not disappoint, no matter what Sasha might wish. "But this will, cutey," she says with a sinister laugh that makes Sasha's chest squeeze up and her stomach try to initiate subatomic implosion.

All Sasha can do is scream herself as the punch hits her; she doesn't even see it coming. Based on a few flashed warnings, it would have hurt, even when she was hopped up on Green Martian physiology. If she had a ribcage rather than an armored compartment with now Nth metal-alloy shock absorption, having her side cave in like that would have probably been instantly fatal, anyway. 

As it is, damage warnings on the new  _ and _ old HUD, activated by accident, scream along with her. Even the chrome screams the equivalent of pain, filtered, as it warns her that there's damage to the joint connectivity interlocks. The way her limbs are flung out behind her as she's knocked aside seem to suggest that's certainly why they feel like they're barely hanging on.

_ Wheeeee ouch. _ It  _ does _ hurt, indeed. The buildings she's knocked through don't particularly seem to do much more damage on top, so that's something. The flapping-the-arms thing might have something to it; reflexively forcing her arms back parallel with her body bleeds off kinetic energy quickly enough.

Sasha has to take a moment to get her feet back under her when she falls. It's too long, far too long, but hitting the ground running would have been as well. In a moment, she's bodychecked back to the ground.

Or rather, hipchecked by a perversely shapely flank, even further out of place on WBH's insanely muscular body. Sasha's seen the files and met more than a few of the world's mightiest; neither Superman, nor even Fuerza in her Strength Avatar form looked near as ripped as this two point three-five woman. The following eight-two-two-one etc. of her height's decimal digits trail off to a floating point on the display.

Like she's just so impossibly huge that aspects of her size, like her height, cannot be precisely calculated. Let alone the breadth of arms that, loose at her sides, look like the best Arnie could manage, flexed, at the top of his career. Those thighs look bigger than Sasha's  _ shoulders _ , upgraded OMAC armor plating and all, and so covered with chiseled definition that the LIDAR is insisting it can map what should be individual muscle fiber striations.

Some precision measurement seems possible; as Target WBH stands over Sasha, her feet are exactly five percent past shoulder width; right exactly ball to toe parallel with the left, toes  _ exactly _ thirty percent spread-- exact, exact, exact.

Sasha isn't sure that she can get an exact judge of bra size, but suspects that it's reaching towards the latter half of the alphabet. That didn't  _ used _ to be on Sasha's list of attractive things. Nor did women in general, even before most of the parts involved were replaced  _ again _ .

A perfect double lat spread, right down to exact ninety-degree forearm-bicep angle, and fists parallel to navel. Somehow, by the thread count of the business suit she seems to have repurposed into a bikini, Sasha doesn't think Target WBH used to do any form of catwalk strutting at all. Maybe; she tries not to prejudge a person's off-hours habits except as they create security issues.

The massive musclewoman raises a strong, but not masculine, chin, flares her nose a bit, and stares contemptuously at Sasha.

_ And while, my  _ god, _ were Bruce's abs ever one of the things that attracted me to him… this woman doesn't just make him look flabby, she looks… I mean, I am  _ certain _ I didn't have chrome nipples in the base plans, and I'm pretty certain I didn't make any when I was using the Manhunter's powers. _

But the only reason Sasha can't say her hypertech alloy nips-- and have them she does-- are harder than the huge, fleshy nubs poking at the surprisingly well-repurposed business bikini… is because Sasha knows far too well that those are far harder than any part of her body, chrome or not.

And it's as much from the brawniness as it is the lush curves, right down to the hip that slammed her to the ground.

As much from seeing shoulders so wide and thick that they seem to make the concept of a man being called muscular laughable. Just like the perfectly shaped lats bulging out to either side by those cruel fists. From seeing arms bulge bigger than Michael or Bruce's legs ever got-- and the legs…

_ I guess I'd have said I was a woman's leg woman back in the day, if anything. But that was more dancer types. These may  _ move _ like a dancer's, and they may have the  _ shape _ of an  _ erotic _ dancer's… _

_ I should be terrified. I should be terrified. _ A sob escapes her throat.

Because she's not terrified of legs just like the ones she's seen break every bones in the body of Sergeant New York with just a small demonstration like this. It didn't even take that one using the obscenely sexualized body scissorlock that ended the life of the Bronx Breaker after finishing breaking every bone in his body. They're huge.

Although every bit as curvy and sensuous as a leg fetishist's fever dream, the huge, hulking prominences of her quads are standing out with gorgeous separation and deep, crisp grooves. They're powerful, They're feminine, They're beautiful, and Sasha Bordeaux knows they're deadly as an OMAC army-- possibly at its highest drone count or more.

And she wants to kiss them and lick them and worship them, not run from them.

It costs her precious time, contemplating those legs with tears streaming down her face. Exactly what the Hunter wants. By the time Sasha has recovered enough to try to throw herself to her feet, the pose is over and one of those terrible hands has her by the mohawk.

Sasha cries out again, and the biochemical pheromone count rises as the woman's bikini becomes further damp over the groin, aroused and arrogantly smug. She tilts her head to the left, and slaps Sasha across the jaw. It's almost a motherly bat-- except no mother cat chews her lower lip like that while batting a kitten.

So gentle Sasha's head isn't knocked off-- but it's a near-run thing. She howls with pain; the OMAC coating and reinforcement barely keeping the still-extant jaw beneath. Target WBH runs a thumb over the now Nth-Metal/Unobtanium alloy dispersal fin atop her head.

  
Warnings flare as the metal is bent and curled by just an idle thumb motion. It's not pain-- not in a standard sense-- but the computer equivalent in signals is definitely there. "Always did like spitcurls better than mohawks, honey," WBH half-giggles, half-purrs.

"Mm," she grunts, chewing on her lower lip again. "I don't know what you were, or why I hated you. Hell, I don't even know-- much less care--  _ who _ you were. You're just lucky none of  _ my _ family got killed in OMAC drone strikes."

She sneers. "It doesn't much matter now; your name's a combination of slave and mud now." Another one of those odd laughs; this one's closer to half-sob than half-purr. "Slavemud? Mudslave?"

The powerful, corded muscles of her throat stand out as her head vibrates back and forth with the giggle. "Mudslave, I guess it is! Meh." She blinks, finishes folding the dispersal fin into an imitation spitcurl, and hauls her up close for a fierce kiss that leaves Sasha's cybernetic body tingling in ways she's pretty sure that weren't in the manufacturer's specs.

"I'm Cecilia," she says, nodding with a chipper smile, head tilted far to the left. "Call me Mistress?" she asks, in a tone that half-sounds like there's an absent please to the sentence that was intended, but lost along the way.

"It kept the last guy alive!" Cecilia laughs again, blinking. "Unless death by exposure counts." Then she shakes her head. "No, he's still wiggling. A bit."

The ripped woman looks like she eats World's Strongest Man competitors for breakfast and finishes them off with main battle tanks for a midmorning snack. Yet, she's obscenely curvaceous, stacked so heavily that just being hauled in for the kiss squooshes Sasha into her cleavage. Warm, firm breastflesh squeezes across and past Sasha's shoulders, making Sasha jerk up in place.

More, Cecilia's muscles aren't just splatted on, like someone hit the sliders on the prefab silhouette without a care for the balance. They're enormous, yes. But even the breadth of her shoulders and the bulge of her traps feeding into her neck is so well-balanced and built together, that it all just looks like a normal, natural part of a well-curved woman's body.

"Anyway," the Hunter pants, giving Sasha a smile so heart-wrenchingly earnest it makes Sasha smile back despite the echoes of pain bursting through her body, like a thousand micro-Jays running along her nerves. "I'd really like it if you called me mistress, Mudslave." She giggles again. "It'll help me to help  _ you _ live. While I experiment and find out what's so special about you, anyway!"

Cecilia frowns. "Or  _ was _ , anyway… Are you special? Let's see."

Then she reaches up to cup one of Sasha's breasts. Unresponsive, cold chrome-- or well, unresponsive, cold, hypertech alloy, but it  _ looks _ shiny. That's what it should be, a short tanktop worn only out of a vague, remnant sense of modesty and desire not to have to argue whether or not barbie doll parts should count for indecent exposure laws.

Instead, Sasha all but melts, whimpering and squirming her hips around. She feels flat-- flat-chested, flat-hipped, little more than a paper cut-out before this impossibly muscular mistress. But she also feels like the paper's been touched to a match, like she has to gyrate her hips desperately towards the woman's thigh, or her tit will melt from the heat of just that touch.

The thigh in question is so heavily chiseled and bulging with tautly confined power that Sasha doesn't know if her whole body could have compared, back when maintaining a certain solid combination of power and poise was a part of her professional benefits. It makes her burn, too; not with pleasure, but with shame. Like she was lying to all those rich bastards, especially the Wayne Enterprises board.

Pretending she was strong, when women like Cecilia were waiting to show what feminine muscle really means. What muscle means, for that matter. Cecilia's face and body are indelibly stamping themselves into even Sasha's  _ chipped _ memory, on references for power, toughness, and beauty-- of all genders.

Sasha went from bodyguard cum proto-superhero to cyborg super-secret agent because she refused to turn on Bruce Wayne, despite the pressures of a DA out to make a splashy case and her own attorney trying desperately to save her from a life sentence or worse. In prison, she refused to back down, too; she end up being beaten so badly that when Checkmate stepped in, reconstructive as well as enhancement surgery was necessary. Which in turn got her infected with the OMAC conversion virus.

She pushed through Brother I's networked control  _ and _ Maxwell Lord's worldwide telepathic push to keep fighting during that near-apocalypse, too. Sasha Bordeaux may be said to be a stubborn woman. More chrome than flesh now, but the will inside is undimmed.

But the pain… the terrible, wrenching pain, and the way her head is being drawn to Cecilia, threatens to overturn all of that in an eyeblink. Not drawn in the sense of Cecilia's hand, manipulating her hypertech, meta-level war-ruggedized body around like playdough. There's that, too, of course.

Then, though, Cecilia yanks her around, and screams at her, asking questions about the fight and why all the Hunters seemed to have a mad hate-on for her. That Sasha doesn't have many answers doesn't bother her, it seems.

It bothers Sasha more that she's able to avoid mentioning Sister Eye… and Cecilia doesn't seem to  _ care _ . Asking the questions, and beating Sasha when her answers aren't adequate-- and they never are-- that seems to be the point, despite her talk of experimentation.

She's experimenting with pain and damage. Watching the Nth Metal alloy heal back slower and slower each time she wrenches a joint out of place or squeezes, say, Sasha's forearm until it looks like a rubber band is pulled taut around it to the bone. Cecilia doesn't seem to have an exact goal in mind, even.

She moves on when the damage gets too severe for Sasha to heal swiftly. Leaving her throbbing with lust, pulsating with agony, and shuddering everywhere. What's worse is the other sensations. Sensations-- and reactions-- that should not be possible.

Not since most of her abdomen had to be reconstructed.

Cecilia yanks Sasha's clothes off, too. Not that Sasha wears much clothing any more outside of the office. Not on missions, even on cold nights like this. Tanktop, cargo pants, shoes. Why even bother with socks, let alone underwear?

_ Well _ , Sasha trembles,  _ because maybe she'd have let me keep them. _ For all the rest that's being done to her, it's her utter nakedness that brings an extra spurt of tears and shivers. An OMAC sheath-- and core structure-- that for years Sasha had to have repeated therapy sessions, just to think of it as hers, and not some alien growth, and she feels so vulnerable

Over the years, damage, experimentation, and emergencies always seemed to end up with more and more of Sasha's body as replacement parts. She's never thought there would be anything as terrifying as the idea of being controlled directly again. Of-- of being  _ hacked _ .

But that's not what this is. That would be like being mildly buzzed compared to this. Sensations that had become so alien to Sasha rush back into her, making her cheeks heat beneath the chrome and more physiological elements than impossible nipples come rushing back.

The lubrication isn't oil, and it isn't fear urination, either. She's wet-- wet and aching-- for the hand that's beating the shit out of her. It's an incredible rush: desire as more than a distant, vague emotion, attraction as more than remembered aesthetics and personality-based admiration.

Sasha goes very, very quickly from, "Fuck you!" to "I don't know, mistress!" indeed at that point. It makes Cecilia giggle, slap Sasha's aching tits again and leave another handprint in the chrome.

Sasha refuses to call her Mistress Cecilia in her head. She's always wondered if having the OMAC implants left in made her more vulnerable to control. If even with the shielding that Lord and I wanted to prevent  _ other _ people from repurposing their slaves, there was something done to her that meant…

She's now hardwired to obey. She's always fought it, of course. But if her chrome is hardwired to obey-- and now, her new alloy seems… responsive… in ways that seem impossible-- she has to wonder if the Hunters are re-wiring everyone to be obedient.

Whatever it is, the two seem to be synching, but Sasha refuses to let her soul follow mind and meat.

As the burn of arousal and agonizing pain intertwine, she vaguely registers Cecilia's chuckled, "Glad you finally fucking learned some courtesy, Mudslave!" before she's kissed again. This time, she has to internally order her shoulder joints into lock to prevent her arms from reaching out to take Cecilia in her hands as eagerly as the last time she'd held Michael.

Like she used to dream about Bruce.

Cecilia snorts a bit. The tall, musclebound woman grabs Sasha's chin and raises an eyebrow. "Shoulder sockets to--" She frowns, and there's almost a childish pout there. "Unlock them, Mudslave."

"Wha-- AAAAGGHHHH!" Sasha screams as Cecilia starts to jerk her left arm into place. Shuddering in terror and pain, she forces herself to focus on the unlock code before too much damage is done.

"How," she groans, and it doesn't take nearly the same force of will to force her shocked mind to add, "Mistress?" to the end.

Cecilia shakes her head; she finishes pulling Sasha's now unresisting arms up to her neck. Nearly half a meter taller than her cyborg prey, the amazonian mini-giantess even ducks down a bit to make it easier for Sasha to hold on. Sasha barely even notices her fingers lacing together, like a lover waiting for a slow dance.

"I can see the insides of your eyes, cutie," Cecilia croons, ghhhhhfe her hands coming down, not to Sasha's hips, but to her shiny metal ass. Cecilia's fingers grip, fondling roughly, as she starts to sway and turn around.

She has to struggle to remember that this is an enemy. It's been a mere matter of minutes. The taint of it, sliding through her brain and her circuits feels  _ far  _ worse than having Brother I in her brain and Maxwell Lord in her mind.

Nothing like this womb-deep compulsion to be spread and used by this impossibly sculpted superwoman. Megawoman, perhaps; no mere super superlative would be enough, would it? To have her body's transformation completed and to be wrapped around a fist with a greater width than her thigh-- and more hardness than anything OMAC could make of her.

Or… just to taste, and serve between the muscles that bring death and at the pussy that increasingly feels like the only reason to keep living.

Weeping from pain and shuddering with unrelenting  _ need, _ Sasha stares up at Cecilia, blinking. "Oh.." Her breath comes in short, shuddering waves that set her chest heaving as she follows the powerfully built woman's lead. Whatever else is being done to them, her tits don't  _ jiggle _ yet, at least not with the OMAC sheath in place.

But they feel so squishy inside. Squishy, and tight, like her breasts were being squeezed just short of being further agony-- but more than enough to stimulate. More than enough to force further arousal.

_ Is this what Sister Eye did to me to keep me alive with the alloy? Or is this just her? _ She has no idea, and no control at all.

She is still able to feel animosity, but it's distant now. The squeezes… They all feel so much  _ better _ , too, in all sorts of horribly pleasurable ways.

Soon, it's official. Sasha's body  _ definitely _ is reacting to the pain in ways that really weren't her thing… before.

"You should pay closer attention, Mudslave," Cecilia whispers. Sasha fights the urge to cry; she has no idea how she's making the Hunter upset now.

She's not sure which is worse; the increasing fragmentation of anything resembling self-control, her body's chrome shifting to an organic metal sexbot theme-- or the possibility that upsetting Cecilia is bad for itself.

Not just for the pain. Not when so much of Sasha isn't sure that she wants to avoid the pain. It takes her a few heavy-breathing moments to remember what words are and how to sound.

"I don't understand, Mistress," Sasha moans. She doesn't let go of the gorgeous muscle-horror's neck, at least not yet; her fingers tremble and slide down some to the bulge of her traps. "How am I failing you?"

"You're not, baby," Cecilia tells her, and kisses her fiercely on the lips. Now Sasha does respond actively, sucking on Cecilia's tongue and hooking her knee up onto as much of the powerfully developed thigh as she can.

It's not like she can get  _ more _ exposed.

Purring, Cecilia breaks the kiss and licks Sasha's tears away. "Power reserves failing," she says-- and Sasha realizes that in her stupor, she'd neglected the old HUD coming back online. Cecilia just squeezes Sasha's athletic rear again and grins, raising an eyebrow.

"I expect you to last so much longer than the last four-- they were guys. Women are supposed to have more stamina than this. But-- that's okay. I'll just make more use of the time you have left."

At the ninth and last, Sasha's will isn't broken. She refuses to scream until the actual pain comes, even though her stomach wrenches. Even when Cecilia's hand comes up between her legs, and the devilish look on her face turns demonically wrathful, her brow furrowing and pupils narrowing, the slash of her smile full of bright, bright teeth.

It's kind of a relief as well as painfully disappointing, then, that she has no time to enjoy her own suffering. In fact; she barely has a moment to notice her LIDAR collision warning when  _ another _ Hunter leaps in from-- somewhere. The impact lifts Sasha completely out of Cecilia's arms, and ushers her even faster own into darkness.

Cecilia falls alongside her, but Sasha's fading vision doesn't show any likelihood that will last.


	7. Hunters Rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the mind of Jin Rhee.
> 
> Hunter. Her mind is awash with incredible sensations and has been replicated countless times within itself; her body flooded with unstoppable strength and magnified into giantess stature, and her senses, penetrate the world entire. Save solid stone and even hard-packed earth.
> 
> Nothing else, save her other Hunters,can stop her. She was drawn to chase a strange, OMAC-looking drone, even when her hatreds for her other Hunters--
> 
> And her desire to claim a Flash--
> 
> Would have pushed her elsewhere. But now, she is free...
> 
> And in addition to the cute little OMAC-lette there's something special about this pretty Hunter. The one beating the OMAC chick.
> 
> Cecilia... Ceci. Gargantuan muscles; incredible speed, delicious cruelty.
> 
> Ceci is a competitor. Ceci could actually hurt her-- or she might hurt Ceci.
> 
> Ceci will make her world perfect. But first...
> 
> She has to show Ceci how strong she is. Brutality seems about right.

Jin Rhee is having a great night, overall. The day before… she could happily have lost those memories from her now-eidetic set. But, hey, after she woke up  _ two-thirds _ again taller and oodles more massive than when she went to sleep, she feels like she can take on the whole damn world.

The orgasm she woke up on-- painful or not-- something of a plus. The catastrophic feeling like she'd never been allowed to have a drop of water, let alone a scrap of food? Could have lived without.

About the only downside is that there are even bigger bitches than Jin's two and a half meters out there. But, what with being able to see through nearly everything except for stone, she's been able to track down every last jackass who ever,  _ ever _ fucked with her at Juliard, though one of them was a fellow hulked-out super-amazon, so Jin gave her a pass.

And a few of them were kind of young.

Something tells her not to go for the spoiled little brats, not yet, and if she's going to leave them alive, she leaves the parents, too-- sometimes y'know, taking a little  _ something _ for herself if dad (and/or mom) is cute, but, hey. They live!

More importantly, Jin doesn't feel anywhere near so Hungry any more. She doesn't feel like she's on the road to insanity with every breath that isn't screaming at some poor little thing to drop trou, like that firefighter with the nice ass. She's pretty sure that's about all that matters to her now.

And the little kid thing. A bit. It bothers her a little bit, too.

How little it all bothers her.

Then, in the middle of a grudge match with a cunt a third smaller than Jin, but almost twice that again broader in the shoulders, something  _ weird _ happened. It focused. It all focused.

All of her pent-up rage, all of the hate that filtered into her from a lifetime's worth of being treated like her desires came last, her autonomy suspect, her emotions disregarded, her body used as a political and aesthetic battleground, and then finally, finally, let go but given a ticking clock that said, "Hey, be worse than all of them-- or go insane and die"... all of it concentrated and aimed.

Like,  _ hella _ concentrated, and aimed at what looked like an OMAC with customization ugprades, flying about and smacking her fellow benefits of musclemania. Jin struggled with the compulsion, for a little bit-- she really, really is sick of playing along with other peoples' tunes-- but then, gave in. For a few wondrous moments, all of it was gone.

The rage. The Hunger. Feeling like every moment was slipping further and further into insanity and loving it.

Instead, Jin just knew who everyone else was-- everyone else who mattered. She didn't know their names, but she knew them more intimately than lovers without ever touching them. She knew where they were, she knew what they  _ knew _ , and she could feel herself thinking not just with them, but through them. Like everyone's brainpower was distributed, linked, and perfectly in harmony.

It was kind of creepy, actually, and she really would have preferred trying to get back to chasing the Flash. The dignified-handsome old dude, not the smokin' blond geeky one, or the yummy redhead with anger issues version. Not some bint "ooooh I'm a SPECIAL OMAC, look at me!" flying around with his scent. Of course, Ms. Not-a-Drone had done something that had taken him from the field…

… And Jin  _ had _ decided to make a point of hunting the Flash because he'd taken a couple of decently-dicked gay guys away from her she'd intended to make race to see who could get her to cum first if they wanted to live. Like that was for him to judge, or something. So it made sense, sort of, to give his rescuer his slot.

Except that she hadn't been able to stop, and that, Jin was  _ not _ pleased by.

Then it all broke up. She hated the broad-shouldered bitch again, but… they were on other sides of the hunting zone. The OMAC chit was falling from the sky.

And then, there was the prettiest girl Jin ever did see.

Jin wasn't into girls before tonight. Now, of course, she's into anything that can suffer. And apparently, into brunettes with weird laughs but so very, very pretty eyes.

Not just because of the nice rack… and ass… and very nice muscles. Jin's are bigger, but she likes that, too. And indeed, Ms. Laugh does have a nice rack and ass, and is quite the hot hardbody, about fifteen centimeters shorter than Jin.

It's more than that. It's like the compulsion, but without the compelling. Like Jin knows, just looking at Ms. Laugh that she is hurt from so many of the same things Jin is, but isn't damaged the same way. Like they can lean on each other, knowing they're walking the same direction, helping each other over different potholes along the way.

It's just a bonus that Ms. Laugh-- "Cecilia," apparently-- got possession of the OMAC chit.  _ Maybe Cecilia… no, she's a Ceci, isn't she? Maybe Ceci knows what the fuck that was about. I can beat it out of her. _

It doesn't bother Jin that she wants to beat the shit out of this woman who makes her think of things more than the next fuck. Who makes her think that there might be a life worth building, not just smashing most things, torturing what's still moving, and fucking anything pretty.

Definitely including smashing many things, torturing most of what's still moving, and fucking anything pretty. Especially together.  _ We're all gargantuan, stacked and jacked mega-amazons now, right? _

_ Right. So surely, beating the crap out of each other is a mating ritual, right? Showing each other our strength! _ It makes sense.

Strength matters a lot to Jin now. It used to be music. Flute, and violin, and piano, and occasionally, singing

Now… Now Jin is close enough to exactly two and a half meters tall. She's so broad in the shoulders, she looks like she ate two of the tuba guys and converted them-- and their tubas-- right into muscle. Instead of the short ponytail she was told to grow for "professional reasons," because her hair had fuck-all to do with her musical skills, her hair is now cut-- or something-- into this  _ sweet _ little close-cropped thing with a curling set of strands that come up under her ears on both sides, and no matter how hard she fights, even when it gets torn off, it always regenerates back.

How awesome is that?

Those shoulders aren't just wide and muscular, though. They're hooked into some pretty ripped arms, with upper arm circumference bigger than her old desktop computer. Even with that, though-- and looping, spiraling fibrous forearms that match-- she doesn't look bloated.

It's just so cool! Her legs are the same way; she's seen smaller motorcycles (and thinner dudes) than her legs. And even though they're covered in tight packed, undulating bulges that have just enough space to show off the classic anatomy beneath, the muscles, and these interesting additional muscles that follow them and support them, are pulled and banded into each other such that in  _ outline _ , they look like curvy-thick perfection.

Like Chun Li decided to beat Zangief up for his steroid supplier, but kept the bitchin' hips and thighs that make guys  _ want _ to have them wrapped around their heads. Or at least, who say that, if they know what's good for them and their continued aspirations in the field of breathing. Oh yeah, curvy and strong are just the start for her legs

Which matches her truly spectacular teardrop-shaped ass pretty perfectly too! She  _ has _ always been an ass woman, and hers makes her glad she can see through her own body or she'd be stuck with never leaving a mirror. The gigantic boobs that look like a sort of last gift to horny guys who might not want to be owned by a musclebound goddess but aren't going to get much of a say…

Enh. Nice, but, you know. She wishes they were a little less awkward, but she can deal. Literally; her combo platter of powers apparently includes figuring out compensation angles for porn-star-plus tits.

And that's just the shape. The  _ perks _ are amazing. And not even just how perky said tits are, and how little she needs a bra!

The aforementioned ability to see through her body-- to see sound, in fact, hear light, and feel radiation bouncing off matter she didn't even used to have  _ names _ for. She now knows what red silk smells like a kilometer away, and instinctively how to track down the cutie wearing it. What he'll taste like-- and why he'll have to suffer for that.

The muscles would be nice just for themselves, but they're far more than just mass per mass strong. She's seen ladies like herself smacking down all the big names. Superman apparently got bounced across the continent; the Green Lantern fled into space, Aquaman fled home to his wife crying, the blond Flash got picked up by someone everyone else keeps calling  _ the _ Candy Mandy.

Right now, if big, burly ladies who can smack Superman around stay away,  _ away _ from someone and give their name a "the," Jin is happy to stay away from them.

Which is why she hadn't been cape-bagging. Since that tends to get the attention of other,  _ bigger _ ladies, she's stayed away from them, right? Would have kept doing so, if  _ this _ fucking Flash could have kept his nose in his own pants.

Helmet.

_ Whatever. _

And so much more. Jin never studied martial arts; she barely even knew how to dance, and that, just for formal circumstances. But now, when she's fighting-- it's like she's able to create the sort of moves and entire styles best suited for her opponent and circumstances. Just the way someone moves, or tilts their head, or how their fingers grip into a fist, or not-- it all seems to add up so quickly that she's already got so many options-- like her fists and her focus write the script and choreography all in advance, and she's just fitting in pieces to jam how she wants.

She's got so many powers now, it'd be hard to keep track-- if she couldn't think in so many different ways at once, and if it wasn't so easy to make thinking about how awesome she is naturally also include contemplating how Ceci will make her smile when they're having to do the administration work for the territory the two of them will carve out and be warlords or whatever, and half a dozen other things at the same time.

As far as Jin Rhee is concerned, the Pulse was the Great Big Cheat Code Entry in the sky, and she got her very own muscle goddess mode.

That so many others did too seems less frustrating, in a world with Ceci in it. But Ceci is a bit-- well. Shaken by it all.

She's obsessing over the OMACette, and not watching Jin-- or watching  _ for _ Jin.  _ Time to show her how strong I am, _ Jin purrs, stroking her hand down between her thighs for a moment. She tastes the heady sweetness that is herself-- and leaps.

Ceci is the one who should be paying attention, after all. The OMACette? OMAClette? The cyber-chick doesn't really matter-- and she doesn't get to stay awake for this. Jin's leap takes Ceci off her feet, but the glancing impact into the botgirl sends her metal ass into recharge mode or whatever.

Seeing the inside of other people's eyeballs is freaky.

Ceci pops back up, her eyes going bright. Jin takes a squat stance, hands out and ready to grab-- but she's faking it. When Ceci slides for her shin, Jin sidesteps, and swings her knee for Ceci's head.

But Ceci has an interesting trick too. Just the moment before reaching Jin and getting kissed knee-first, the smaller muscle woman turns a flat  _ one-hundred-and-twenty _ degrees without slowing down at all! As she sails out of Jin's way, her crazy laugh becomes heavy breathing, and not the kind from exertion; her cheeks heat up, and best of all, her pussy gets all the wetter.

But there's a look of yearning in the way Ceci's eyebrows rise in Jin's direction, and the wildness in her black eyes gets even more intense.

_ So I'm not the only one to feel this way. Maybe even not the only one to see this. I'm going to love sitting on that face _ .

It's a beautiful face, the craziness getting more intense the more they fight but that just makes it look more pussy-ready to Jin. She's not a weak, retiring muscle bitch, either; by spiraling around Jin's thundering assaults, she manages to pepper Jin's arms with light jabs. Changing from leaping over a heavy rabbit punch to slicing up into a straight kick at the last moment lets her leave bruises all across Jin's armored abs.

Now, Jin isn't quite into these fast, change-up attacks. They're cute on Ceci, but Jin is trying to show her how strong she is! And since there aren't any convenient mountains to throw out her close-by, she figures hammering right through Ceci's defenses is best.

Eager to end this, Jin goes for some straight-up-the-middle slams. Not a lot of art to it, but she is a fucking heavy hitter, and she wants to make Ceci acknowledge that in orgasms. Oh yes, she does.

So she just charges straight into where she thinks Ceci should be, throwing punch after punch after punch, each one perfectly following the lines of her body to carry through the most energy. The one that clocks Ceci right above the left tit makes a sweet sound of ribs cracking and leaves a virtual imprint of her fist in the clenching bulge of the pectoral muscle.

That, in turn, keeps Ceci off-balance enough for Jin to put her knee into the smaller musclewoman's left ribs, doing for several of those, too. Ceci scream in delicious, nipple-stiffening agony in its wake, careening off her feet and to the side. Jin charges after her, moaning with pleasure instead of pain.

It's amazing. Absolutely, positively amazing. Jin feels like she's hulking out bigger and bigger for it; dominating  _ Ceci _ is so much a greater charge than dominating feeble little humans that she'd almost feel like giving it up to rape Ceci every time she gets a little horny.

Except that she knows she couldn't; it would be an insult to the beautiful engine of destruction that is Ceci. Plus sooner or later, she'd like to talk about things that don't involve interrogating her about the OMAClette and the weird hunting pack thingie.  _ I think, "Call me Mistress!" is probably not going to be a cool way to start, too. Maybe something like, "You're quite strong, Ceci. Let me introduce you to the strength of my pussy?" _

It's about then, when she's still trying to work out the best way to convince Ceci that Jin would make a good life partner, that Jin's plan starts to go off the rails. It's hard to make someone bend down to one knee and surrender to the power of your punches when some of the key elements are missing. Some very key elements indeed.

Like the punching-- if not the power.

Jin is a lot stronger than Ceci. That much becomes clear after they trade a few more punches each. The problem is-- it's not really an equal exchange.

Jin manages to land a sweet hit on Ceci's right upper arm that sends her reeling in pain. Not to mention that it sends that hella fine ass bouncing along in trembles Jin wants to both smother away with her breasts (somehow) and to make more of them. Preferably by spanking it.

_ Mmm. _

But so far, that's the only other shot Jin managed to land since their first few clashes. Ceci's a bit faster than Jin is, but seems to be no better that Jin in actually managing to land a punch or knock one aside. However, she's using her speed better than Jin is using her strength advantage, and that's getting on Jin's nerves.

In a beautiful, clit would rather fast forward to the end, sort of way, but still, irksome! She's gotten any number of left jabs and glancing blows in simply because she manages to maneuver  _ around _ Jin faster than Jin can reach. They sting, rather than the crunching impact Jin's fist made-- and is responsible for why those are left hooks and left jabs, not an equal number thrown from both sides like Jin.

What makes it worse is that Ceci is doing this all trying to maneuver injured! She may be healing, but Jin can  _ see _ that the force of her strikes slowed that down. With her left ribs knitting and damage all over her burly upper right arm, Ceci is still managing to out-maneuver Jin-- so  _ she's _ the one landing the punches.

Even without Jin's power.

And there are a lot of them, so Jin's breathing is getting labored. She does nearly land a second hit, a kick, when Ceci gets distracted by Jin's pretty apricot-colored, watermelon-sized titflesh bobbing up and down. Jin's  _ really _ disappointed, angry even, that Ceci manages to roll out of it before Jin can connect, again!

Jin has become a lot smarter than she used to be, but she's starting to think that picking a fight with Ceci to impress her may not have been the best way to open up a serious relationship. Maybe by bringing a couple of cuties, suggesting they hunt down a nice DJ or band to make play for them… Anything except "pick a fight out of nowhere, and start to lose it!"

There's one positive, at least: Ceci seems to be enjoying this. She even cooed when Jin did land that one heavy knock. To be honest… seeing how good  _ Ceci _ is as a fighter is getting Jin so wet she's almost ready to surrender and offer to eat Ceci out for an apology, as long as Jin is allowed to masturbate while doing so.

She seems like she'd be cool like that, and while Jin hopes she's not going to have to… She's starting to hope that Ceci likes her Plan B as much as she's clearly enjoying  _ her _ side of Plan A.

It's just… She keeps staying out of Jin's reach! With  _ weird _ tricks that Jin cannot figure out fast enough. Like who would have thought to run  _ up _ a wall like a fucking cartoon, rather than through it like any sensible mega-amazon?

_ Wait. I know who-- a Flash! She's using  _ his  _ playbook, the cheating bitch! _

_ Fuck, that's hot. _

Now, the world seems to slow down to the point that even Ceci is only slightly shifting away on the most recent turn. Jin is pretty sure this is just thinking faster than her body can output, but it looks freaky. It gives her enough time to think about-- not what Ceci is doing now, obviously superior to mister nosy oldsy-- what she saw the old Flash doing all over town.

It's… a lot. Some seriously complicated moves. And some, Jin isn't sure she can pull off, not from complication, but simply because her instincts will be screaming at her to do something different.

But Jin now sees how Ceci is redirecting momentum. She'd seen and discarded a lot of the Flash's moves because clearly, the lightning of the Speed Force flaring when she makes a turn isn't going to happen. Unless she's even luckier than she was to find Ceci on this crazy night, and she feels uneasily like hoping for that is blasphemy of a kind she's  _ not _ just going to laugh off with a "Suck my clit, I'll say whatever name however I feel like it."

But she does have all these extra muscles  _ on _ her muscles. Not just the parallel layer that strengthens and protects the core, but this freaky-cool web of smaller muscles that follow the same form and similar function as the bigger ones-- like, say, her calves and hamstrings-- that they're alongside. Similar-- but with more flexibility and ability to redirect or cushion against force.

It isn't an exact analogue. It takes more preparation for one. But even though Ceci is faster than Jin, Jin is much faster than the Flash-- and now, she knows what to look for on Ceci's body other than how hot she looks with her muscles bulging and pumping and her tits shaking in the grip of flexed pecs.

_ Also, it's time to take this fucking seriously if I want to get to the seriously good fucking. _ So she starts another straight-up charging punch dive, only she exaggerates the amount by which the damage is slowing her-- and making her clumsier. It feels wrong to be that sloppy, but she focuses on the prize: Ceci.

Two point three-five meters isn't as tall as Jin, but it makes her bigger than most NBA centers, with a body that looks like it makes the entire MMA sport crew obsolete as a boring, low-stakes hobby for flimsy little geeks. Her dark eyes' wildness has ebbed a bit as the fight goes on, but only in the erratic bursts of energy and interest. The inner fire in them has become refined, focused, and Jin wants to stare longingly into them over some dude with his dick going through her muscular pussy and his face worshiping at the altar of Ceci-Cunt.

Or, you know, the other way around. Jin is flexible. Really flexible, despite the bulky muscles.

_ And I really, really want to get my hands on that ass and finally learn how to play the drums! I've got some percussive ideas for those tits, too. _

That's the prize. So Jin makes her punches fly a bit further and a bit further off center, rocks her hips a little more, and even forces herself to stumble slightly. She's starting to worry she's overselling it when Ceci finally takes the bait.

After all, Ceci still thinks she'll be able to pull out if Jin is faking it. And in fact, as she starts to whip around Jin, using her licksome rack as a counterweight, Jin can already see those extra muscle-on-muscle sets tensing and absorbing her impact to prepare to leap away. It's no trouble at all to see where Ceci's active target is-- and where she's most likely to redirect herself.

Jin begins by snapping her right arm around like a bar to cut off the spinning kick. Her own extra muscles, responding beautifully to Jin's desires, are already preparing for a leap when Ceci darts off to the side. Letting Jin  _ finally _ land a tackle onto Ceci.

The two run head over ass and side over side, bouncing and smooshing bouncy bits into each other. Ceci takes whatever opportunity she can to through quick side kicks along the way, while Jin is starting to slut it up some, really grinding her bigger rack over Ceci's still-prodigious melons. They lost their tops somewhere in the scuffle, so while Jin is taking this all more seriously, and  _ also _ trying to wrap more of her arms around Ceci, she'd still like to advertise Plan B's upsides.

Just in case.

When the added energy of the kicks and slams finally brings them to a halt-- not too far from the OMAClette, actually-- Jin is on the bottom, but both of her long, powerful legs are wrapped tight around Ceci's hardened torso. Her heels are digging into the most vulnerable spots on Ceci's upper thighs, with her burly calves pressing against that sweet, sweet tush.

Meanwhile, Jin's got a pretty good angle to scissor her legs tighter and tighter, her gargantuan quads beginning to press in with (not quite) murderous force. She squeezes her glutes hard and licks her lips, trying to compound the pre-existing damage to Ceci's left ribs. Just to show there's no hard feelings, though, she makes sure to wrap her bearhugging, bigger-than-a-bear's arms just so her right breast smooshes over Ceci's face.

And then Ceci bites her, the bitch! Jin howls in pain, though her treacherous slit has its own things to say. Nevertheless, Jin presses in harder and harder, boobs and arms and legs alike, swinging her body back and forth against the grain of Ceci's movement.

Especially, despite the bites, she manages to flip Ceci over and pounds her palms onto Ceci's shoulders, hammering them back against the earth. Rubble is everywhere around them, buildings of concrete and steel and whatever funky shit LexCorp uses so much dust. But the earth, the earth is impossible for them to penetrate by fists as it is by vision.

Which has the happy coincidence of making it an excellent anvil! But Jin is a bit done with showing off her strength this way. She has so much other stuf she wants to do.

"Hey-- hey Ceci," she pants, and then licks Ceci's forehead. The panting, dark-haired woman woman doesn't pause shoving her powerful hands at Jin's meaty limbs, but she doesn't throw any new strikes.

"Yeah, what, bitch?"

_ Oh, I'm prepared to be a real bitch… or a really  _ good _ bitch… _ "So, uh-- you've got a nice ass, I think you fight pretty, I want to sit on your face-- do we really need to keep fighting?"

That does not appear to have been what Ceci was expecting. " _ What _ ?" she demands, still struggling. "Why did you wait to fucking ask? You're the-- MrmmPhmmmmmmm!"

Jin stops  _ that _ one with a kiss. And then promptly reverses herself, trusting Ceci to know the difference! Since Ceci's tongue goes for Jin's twat, instead of a fist going for a cuntpunch, Jin is pretty sure she made the right choice. Within seconds-- and third orgasms-- she's certain.

The sex is incredible. Absolutely mind-blowing. Jin feels like her hips and her breasts are going to be regenerating for, like,  _ minutes _ afterwards but it's so fucking worth it.

When that calms, when the raging Drives inside of them are gorged on sex and mutual suffering, they start to try lying facing each other, but the earth and said tits make it a little hard. Instead, they drag themselves over to the unconscious OMAClette. Once they make sure she's still out but not dead or scrap or whatever, there's this… moment.

The wildness is back in Ceci's eyes. Dark and furious and powerful-- but now, with a fury that includes every injury and every slight done to  _ Jin _ , not just Ceci herself. And Jin can just feel the trembling in Ceci, the expectation that an offer of intimacy will turn swiftly into betrayal… and the hope that there will be more.

Jin isn't quite sure what her eyes and body and voice tell Ceci, but she'd love to spend-- well. Centuries living up to those promises. "Ceci," she whispers hoarsely. "My name is Jin Rhee. I-- didn't catch your last name."

"I'm Cecilia Rhodes. But to you-- yeah. I'm a Ceci."

Jin purrs, squirming her hips around. She's aware of some crackling, less like distant thunder and more like very quiet lightning, leaping between the two of them, setting up a gradient by which their lives can become one. "This is so  _ right _ , Ceci. The muscles, the power-- all of it is wonderful. But it's you I'm here to find, to fight, to fuck… and to live as though my breaths and yours are the same."

Ceci groans and shudders. "Yes. Yes!" she groans. "Please, Jin-- I need you now more than anything. I heard-- I heard promises being made by other women. Other women like us."

Jin nods. "I think that's what's building up around us. Our promises." She reaches out, offering Ceci her hand.

Ceci takes it. "I am Cecilia Rhodes," she repeats. Her hair flows out wildly all of a sudden, and her lips move as though the words pull themselves from within instead of being forced out.

"I will honor your word as though it had been given with my voice. I swear that I will take the world on with you. That whatever I can claim, I will share; and that in sharing, I will be as generous with you as I am with myself. I will tend to your wounds and I will  _ deal _ with those who wound you."

A growl shakes through the shorter brunette, but it swiftly morphs into a grin at Jin. "My sight and my speed are with you, my love is with you, and the fire that beats so hard in my chest will be cast against anything that stands against you."

She pulls Jin's hand up and kisses it. "We will fight like this again, for our feeding requires it; but no true  _ harm _ will come to you from me if there is any earthly or unearthly way to prevent it, for harm to you will be as harm to my own soul."

A broader smile crosses Ceci's face, savage and lustful. "My slaves will be your slaves; my children, your children. I will take up your causes and fights as my own; I will live, because I am with you, and I will kill, to keep our togetherness safe."

Intensity builds, not just in Ceci's strong, proud voice, but in the invisible electricity, jolting between them; static electricity of the gods. "Pleasure and safety and strength will be my gifts to you, my Jin, if only you will have me the same-- for good and for wicked and for savage, and not even death will undo what we are: beloved forever. I so swear."

Jin groans, shaking and tensing, her muscles rippling and bulging. The words have a ritual beat to them, thumping out, and if Ceci's words were pulled from her, Jin's rush out to join them. "I am Jin Rhee," she moans. "Your promises, now, before, always, will have the force of my soul. And my strength will hold back this world or any other at your side. Whatever I can take, I will take only so it is your as well; what I have shall be yours because it is mine."

Her other hand comes up to cup Ceci's chin, finger stroking over the powerful jawline. "I will be your shield against harm and your avenger; I will be your mace, and where I hammer, your enemies will fall. That we clash will be glorious, but no, I swear that it shall have no harm in it, that even my might will turn on itself to prevent true damage to you-- my love."

Both hands together now, stroking hungrily over Ceci's face. "Those that obey me will know that your word is my law; my children, your children."  _ If we can… No. When we do have them. _

Her heart thunders, powerful pecs seizing up and making her breasts quiver. "I will take up your crusades; your banner and mine will be the same. I will live to love you, kill for your love-- or your desire-- and our union will be the wellspring of sacredness in our lives."

Jin kisses Ceci, just lightly, but more of the lightning passes between them. "I am strength," she says proudly. "And from my strength, I will be your shelter; from my strength, I will bring you delight, my Cecilia, and I will have you for good and for wicked and for savage, and when death claims one or both of us, we shall know the other's soul is still joined, for what a feeble thing is death, against our bond."

She nods in quick, jerky movements. "Together, beloved. Forever. I so swear!"

Jin's world is full of Ceci. In the future, there will be ways to make the mating bond easier; in the future, the ritual will be known and understood, not instinct. But for now, there is only each other.

Hunters' senses are so acute that they bleed over into each other, hearing light, seeing sound, feeling neutrinos and so forth. Smell and taste might as well be the same thing for a Hunter, except that, as ever, the closer and more direct the act of perceiving is, the more data is derived. Their minds are insanely fast; Jin's little analysis of Ceci's derived fighting style happened more or simultaneous to sufficient data being present and her will being set to the concept.

In part, this is why Hunters cooperate together in horribly effective ways. They sense each others' body language, position, heart beat, the twitch of a muscle-- and they can twitch individual muscle parts so fast as to seem completely still. They are then aware of each other, often to a degree that no other entity is capable of doing more than approximating.

In part, that's why they find it so hard to think of humans and metahumans as people. Because when two Hunters start to synergize, negotiate, or even argue, they will be "speaking" with every part of themselves. A single clench of a muscle happening untold numbers of time per second can be turned into what amounts to a series of ones and zeroes that the other Hunters pick up. Flexed, one. Unflexed, zero.

A metahuman or a human screams incoherently at the world, even if they think they're the quiet ones. It's disturbing, in some senses, but mostly, it's just… irrelevant. And so is the one screaming.

But even binary communication transmitted by muscle clenches is too basic, too simple to cover what Hunters do normally. When they are "only" using minds with greater processing power than worlds of geniuses, with each task networked into the completion of others and able to completely focus on almost limitless number of tasks simultaneously. With every bit of information, sensory and others, easily integrated and then extrapolated from to produce information about each other.

It's not telepathy. Even after the oaths. But it is communication, and it is very, very fast.

And then, the power of their oaths bind them together-- and they share senses with one another. Hunters have no darkness behind their eyes; they see-- and otherwise perceive-- in a rough sphere centered around their head and projecting  _ through _ their own flesh. But once a Hunter finds another whom they can perceive has the ability to perfectly fit into their lives and will never betray them, they can-- as Jin and Ceci have-- join themselves in a perfect union.

Not merely the spiritual linkages and ritual union. Jin and Ceci now have  _ two _ central reference points. As long as they are within perceptive range of each other, they functionally can see, hear, taste, feel, and so on, through each other, all of the data coming in at once. It certainly makes communication easier.

So when Jin looks at Ceci, she sees not only the results of her own vision, but the way Ceci sees herself, literally and figuratively. Jin's own perceptions and biases filter out into Ceci, too, and vice-versa. So quite aside from having a perfect copy of the other's personality, constantly updated, inside their endless minds, Jin and Ceci now see the world in terms of each other.

Is a cold wind blowing? Jin's musical and poetic metaphors will color how Ceci sees it. Ceci's injuries and the ferocity with which she overcame them even before becoming a Hunter makes her see even ineffectual threats like a cold wind as horrible things, to be endured or disposed of.

And that will color Jin's metaphors, too-- almost immediately. Since neither of them is a part of a preexisting Pride, they have nothing to cushion the effect. No experience with suddenly being a person and a half-- always having that other you, but still being yourself.

They also don't have a Pride to flood with sensory overload, producing a berserker rampage. That happens sometimes, to the very, very powerful, or those closer to the middle. These two just get a rush of two lives waiting to be free and waiting to be bound together, all at the same time.

It's a real kick. Jin and Ceci are lucky in some ways. Not particularly powerful Hunters, nor at an unstable level of development, he sudden re-coloring of the world to include an entirely separate set of experiences and memories makes them burn for each other with total ferocity for a few seconds. They make out; they make love, they make plans. All together.

They will never be alone again. Not on the Changed Earth, and their oath has power even beyond this world. When they die, alone or together, their bond will be inseparable. They will always find one another again.

Which is going to be important for Jin Rhee and Cecilia Rhodes a lot sooner that it will for most members of a species prone to immense (but healable) violence with a lifespan of six hundred to one thousand years. Because both of them still have the scent of Jay Garrick on them. And more importantly, so does Sasha Bordeaux.

The chemical senses of Hunters are incredibly intricate, in some cases as intricate or more than their visual sense. Emotional clues-- sweat, hormones, pheromones and not just the sexual kind-- there are so many ways in which we literally leave our mark on other people. Just like they leave their mark on us.

The Justice Society is a family. Courtney Whitmore knows Sasha is a friend-- is  _ still _ a friend to the Justice Society, after the Pulse. Even if she may not be inclined to be Courtney Whitmore's friend.

Courtney doesn't think she'll be the last, but she acts anyway.

Promises need to be kept.


	8. Lingering Glimmers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha Bordeaux's night has gone from hell, to worse, to a moment of glory.
> 
> And a very fast moment it was, too. Struck down from the skies not long before the swarm of Hunters on her trail would have torn more limbs from her than her Green Martian-enhanced OMAC nanites could ever repair- and then turned the rest of *that* into a fine, silver spray- she has been made the rather unwilling participant in some of the earliest mating rites of the Hunters.
> 
> The formation of a Pride, one of the most sacred moments of Hunter kind.
> 
> Sasha was not particularly blessed by the proceedings. Step by step she has lurched away under power. But she is about to learn that there is nowhere on the surface of the changed Earth that is outside their reach.
> 
> On the other hand, while the two Hunters who've decided that Sasha "Mudslave" Bordeaux will make an excellent mobile dildo are not unaware of the interest of bigger, badder Hunters... They are unaware of just how much a certain Hunter treasures the Justice Society of America.
> 
> Treasures Jay Garrick.
> 
> And, of sorts, sees the community of heroes...
> 
> As family.
> 
> Hail Courtney Whitmore, Duchess Star.
> 
> Queen in the Star Enclaves to be.

An Hour Later

It's almost dawn when Sasha Bordeaux's OMAC nanobots finally complete initial self-repair functions. Not fully repaired; even whatever miraculous alloy of miracle metals Sister Eye uploaded into her. The nanobots are still having immense problems integrating with each other, let alone consuming and altering nearby metals in ways that definitely don't match Sasha's old physics and chemistry textbooks.

One hand to the ground, pressing the slush and dust until there's something solid. Then the other; it's easier to find the same-- knocked over wall, it feels like. But the snow is melting, and the brick feels slick.

Knees. Take a moment to get in place-- the wall is broken there. But Sasha finds them.

Toes. Feet. Legs, best as they can.

_ Up. _

It isn't easy to get herself vertical out of the snowswept rubble, but she does it. LIDAR and passive sonar and just plain audio pick up are giving her a pretty good idea of where both the attacking Hunter and Cecilia are. Even knowing how they almost certainly will react to her attempt to escape, she trudges onward.

Buildings fell here. Buildings were torn down, or through, or exploded. In some cases, buildings were thrown like cabers made of cotton candy.

Large and awkward, but not as hard as it seems at first, except to aim.

There isn't a lot of shelter here-- not that anything above the surface of the changed Earth is shelter from the two giant females currently bringing each other to orgasm sixty-three meters back that way.

Past what used to be a row of residential housing. Earlier, Sasha would have been trying to find victims and to find ways to get them to safety. Now, she's just trying to get away, even though she can't possibly escape.

One foot in front of the other. Ankle and hip joints aren't working as well on the right as they are with the left. Actually, they're barely working at all on the right.

Every step buys time, no matter how meager. Every breath free is a gift. And perhaps she has enough to keep it.

Sasha counts her resources and debits. An internal sweep of what her chrome bits can do shows nothing about 40% functional outside of her head and lungs, and systems integrity is a joke. Her chrome can't tell her much about the what the meat can do-- and what it can tell her, can't do much.

She's alive. She isn't buried under a building, being forced to run her internal libraries as hallucinations to avoid claustrophobic berserking. And, hey, that eighth through twelve stories of a twenty-story building that somehow landed over here, freakishly intact?

None of the slowly fracturing subsegments have fallen on her! So that's a plus! The sad, final tales told by chemical receptors and far-too-accurate imaging and extrapolation software… less so.

She's naked-- but the OMAC sheath is still over her body. She's only "cold" in the sense that her new body registers external temperatures and sends warnings to her. She actually hasn't been raped yet, as near as she can tell, just groped and beaten a lot.

Step, then pull; step, then pull. She can put her weight on her right leg but it doesn't haul her forward right. So she can step forward, pull it into place. Then plant her weight on it, and start again.

One foot, in front of the other. Or at least, as far front as she can rotate that hip joint. It's an awkward motion, and she has to be careful to brace the foot before moving it, lest she slip.

She braces where she can; the rubble has built its own maze. This keeps out the wind, but it's no blessing. Not only was the cold no impediment, but the maze slows her. It won't slow Cecilia.

Everything hurts, and her body has bits she used to wish for but now come with a seriously inconvenient price. She's really horny for the Hunters to catch her. Like, seriously, somehow, she has to keep locking down internal playback as it tries to start showing her when Mi... 

_ Nnngh… _

Her internal, non-meat memory keeps trying to do playbacks of Cecilia taking Sasha down almost as much as her brain keeps trying to focus on those endless, beautiful muscles, and how good they felt correcting Sasha.  _ Correcting my  _ what, _ huh? _ Sasha jeers at herself.  _ Correcting my attempts to make a damn difference-- oh! _

_ And correcting my not getting on bended knees and worshipping at the altar of her command. _

She doesn't dare even think sarcastically about the other "altar" Cecilia wanted her "worshipping" at. It's too easy to get caught inside herself. To fall in line with the parts that have already been caught, and stayed that way.

The parts that didn't get up even so far as to her knees, but she couldn't leave behind.

"Oh, no, cutie, no." The voice is from behind her, to her left. The LIDAR paints quite a picture anyway. That not-quite-calculable two point three-five(ish) meters tall, stacked and jacked form is quite familiar, even in pseudo-holographic relief.

_ Oh shit.  _ Cecilia found her first. After the terror that was that close encounter, Sasha has been having serious second thoughts about deciding to live.

Cecilia wanted to  _ experiment. _ To keep Sasha alive-- her way. "You should listen to the part of you that's, ah… lubricating, little OMAClette." That's the other one. The taller one.

The  _ bigger _ one. How Cecilia didn't feel like she was climbing a small hill to have sex, or maybe boinking one of those cave troll things, Sasha… knows.

Because the bigger one is so beautiful, too. Shapely in ways Sasha occasionally was jealous of before-- never this horny to "see" with the LIDAR. To feel, really.

"If you're wondering whether or not we can tell when you're tickling us with your laser radar," Cecilia laughs. "And I think you are, by that spicy little scent of yours, Mudslave, you are…"

"We do," the bigger one laughs, her heavier tits jogging on with it. Sasha's lurching in the direction of those jiggles before she realizes it, and tries to remember how to go passive or at least forward arc only on the LIDAR.

And of course, it's not just the post-porn-star curves. It's that  _ musculature _ , so superbly sculpted and developed that Sasha  _ should _ be jealous, given how hard she used to work to maintain something like a quarter of the physique by relative size alone. Instead, she just feels like she's inadequate, and always ways. She forces herself to stagger back away, keeping the narrow corridor of LIDAR going forward.

Her arms wrap around her core-- right hand unconsciously shielding her right ribs.

There's a sneer that follows. "Mudslave, you're wearing on our patience," Cecilia says, contemptuously and yet-- a bit haughty, a bit offended. Like she's doing Sasha a favor. "You turn that worshipful little laser radar right back on, get to licking…"

"And maybe we won't break off more than you can regenerate this time," laughs the bigger one. "Especially if you do it on your knees." Her tone leaves Sasha shuddering, fighting for the ability to breathe.

Sasha tries not to listen to either of them. Instead, she drags her right leg forward to reach the left, and refuses to turn her head. Tears are running down her cheeks, outside the OMAC sheath this time.

_ Was every footstep a gift? Or was I just torturing myself, with more 'freedom' to burn myself with when, not if I got captured? _ It would be very easy to think so.

Especially if Sasha listens to the new cyborg pussy that these monsters somehow  _ inspired _ in her. She refuses to talk, even if she can't stop crying. She forces herself to suck in lungs' worth of tortured breath, and tries to move forward-- but the LIDAR turned itself back on.

As Cecilia claps her hands and bounces on her heels, some parts of her bouncing on long after the rest is done, Sasha collapses to her knees. Her arms go tight around her chest, but it's too late, and her nakedness isn't any  _ less _ before these women, but.

But she feels so ashamed to have run away from her  _ owners' _ interest. And that's what it feels like-- the shame of failing what she belongs to. Before, it's only ever really been when something went seriously wrong for Checkmate. 

When people died, her people and civilians, because of choices she made.

Now, she's giving her choices away, one pulse at a time. Pictures of them flaring in her brain and no filters seem to be triggering. The LIDAR paints a lovely picture as it paints over both women. They're standing with the sort of togetherness Sasha's instincts scream at her shouldn't be the result of a meet and boink.

But sooh, her head is lolling back, damaged dispersal fin or not. Her eyes roll slightly off to the side, and she closes her eyes tightly before she can even glimpse a part of the beauty that waits. It doesn't matter.

The LIDAR's photon pulses aren't just firing from their emitters and being counted on their return. They seem to stroke over the voluminous, hulking figures, paying special attention to where the muscles form more tight grooves and the shape forms large curves. Especially the largest curves.

Stroke, and caress. Like her  _ sensors _ are licking the women who think they own her. "Won't…"

There's a sickening crunch from the back of her head and the electronic-neural interface equivalent of alarms flaring. It happened so fast Sasha isn't even sure which direction it came from. It's the big one that speaks, though.

"You don't say  _ won't _ any more, unless it's followed by words like  _ disobey _ , or  _ waste your mistresses' time! _ " she snarls.

_ Still won't think it won't think it… _

Cecilia grabs her by the fin once more and yanks her head around to face the taller one. "It's time for you to be a little more active in your new role. I never had a chance to see how well you eat pussy-- or to feel it. But now, I can have you do that for Jin,  _ and _ feel it!"

_ What? _ _ What is she talking about? Is this some extra crazy? _

"And, of course…" Nothing. Nothing except pain.

One moment, the bigger one, Jin, was looming over Sasha, far too close, and starting to pet herself between the thighs, fingers drawing over her massive quads. Up along the power-packed ripples, as though to draw Sasha routes to follow-- with her mind, and with her tongue.

The next, Cecilia yanked Sasha's head back so hard that Sasha's neck felt like skin and spite were the only things holding it connected to her torso. But before she can even scream, she's gone too; there's a pair of sickening, wet noises-- no crunches, just splatter and something like pressure escaping a valve.

"Ms. Bordeaux?" a deep voice asks, soft from caution, resonant with concern. Sasha begins to roll her head that way. "Sasha Bordeaux?"

Then Sasha's LIDAR lights up. "Oh," she whispers. weeping. "Are  _ you _ my mistress now?" She can't possibly conceive of being free of this woman, except, perhaps, in death.

She's certainly strong enough to do it. Sasha's LIDAR-- and pretty much any other relevant sense she has-- is getting lost just trying to track the topography of this three-meter tall absolute vision of muscular perfection. Sasha is trying to force broken and battered components to look at her with actual eyes; hoping that the blasphemy of letting her LIDAR lick and caress will be forgiven until she can.

"Oh, fuck, they've really busted you up. I don't have time for this! I-- I don't have the technology to fix this, not yet!"

_ I am unworthy… _

Three meters tall; Sasha just keeps coming back to that.  _ More _ than half again her height in the OMAC shell, and more than half again as massive as Jin-- by far. She's so tall that she'd scrape against the ceiling, were the ruins not angled up here, and so broad in her brawny, shredded shoulders that Sasha can't figure out how she even managed to get past the double doors.

_ Except she's beautiful, perfect, of course, the mistress can do anything… _

"Drool is not good…" She has a long double french braid that seems to be concealing much more dense matter than even the usual Hunter hair, and unlike Jin or Cecilia, the mistress is wearing something.

Not much of something; a huge star across breasts that make even Jin's look as slender as Sasha's, with bars of alternating fabric types connecting from point to point and along the lines of the star, big enough to cover the top of abdominal muscles that look more like living and breathing power armor-- the most powerful…

"Okay. Sasha, can you hear me?" Little strings of some weird material connect in the back, pushed tight over incredibly well-developed obliques and sinfully, sinuously curvaceous hips. Her legs and arms have that same combination of immense bulk and smooth grace, the striated, intricate masses larger than can be believed, but the development varies over the length of the muscles, making them fit an overall "correct" human frame.

If by correct, of course, one means the paragon of strength and power to which Superman was but a flimsy, false idol, and of whom all women, even other Hunters, are but shapeless, lumpy copies.

Sasha certainly does right now.

The costume is a bit simpler below the waist. A dramatic swoop of material down to not entirely cover the pubic mound, presumably tied to a set of strings behind. Big, stiletto high-heels, sized for the Hunter but integrated into a set of calf-high boots; above each boot but below the knee is a (sort of) little star, tied by thicker-fabric bar wraps to the boots and around her immense, watermelon-sized calves.

"Yes, mistress?" Her own stomach twists as a wince shows up on that beautiful, strong face, full of character and refined, flowing lines.

The giant of giantesses furrows her brow, the right side of her mouth twitching back. "We'll have none of that," she says firmly. "I'm not going to have  _ that _ conversation with Michael. Turn your LIDAR off, Sasha Bordeaux. And…"

It's Sasha who was struggling so hard to turn off her LIDAR, back so long ago in her blasphemous time, ages of minutes ago. She couldn't, because the Hunters wanted to be adored. Even when she managed to narrow her 'vision', forcing it to a forward cone only, just feeling the presence of Cecilia and Jin forced her to return to pulsing photons all over them both.

Due reverence, and worship for the muscles revealed. But they were nothing more than heralds of this mighty woman.

Now, having heard the command that makes her neural-interface systems leap to obey, she weeps; for even if her slowly self-repairing body gets enough articulation to look upon the new mistress, how could she be so selfish as to see without touching?

And she will not touch without permission…

And… "Sasha!" the voice whips into her spine, her chrome, and her meat. "You walk  _ free _ , damnit, Sasha Bordeaux! If you're going to follow any orders from me-- here they are, in their complete and total form."

Sasha's body quivers, like each shiver is struck through her by every syllable the mighty new Hunter speaks. Like the haze of her pain and damage evaporates each time she shakes. She's being made whole, by those words, and she wishes she were not to be punished so.

"You walk freel Sasha Bordeaux. Damn it-- I can see you've been fighting, and Michael says you're one of the toughest women he's ever met. Shake it off, shake it off and get back to fighting. Even fighting me."

Trying not to think about  _ that _ horror and sin, Sasha tries to remember that name. Michael. The… new Hunter… mentioned a Michael before. It seems to bring back memories. Memories, and warmth."

There's a large inhalation from behind her. Under orders, Sasha fights her chrome pussy's orders to fantasize about what that would do to the enormous, perfectly round and fat tits behind the barred star. "I just need to know-- Jay," the towering powerhouse urges. "Jay Garrick. Is he still alive?"

"He's…" Sasha's eyes flick back and forth. Code streams on error popups. System updating… Repair to neural interface complete.

She's hardly even aware of the groan. "Oh, like that couldn't have happened just a bit later?" The Hunter's frustration no longer feels like Sasha's sin. It feels like a threat-- and, from what she remembers of the sheer power of the new Hunter…

Any threat from this giantess contains absolutely apocalyptic consequences.

Suddenly able to act, her chrome and nano finally starting to cooperate, Sasha leaps to her feet, turning around to face the Hunter with eyes wide. She no longer tries to conceal her nakedness-- she just needs to know where this Hunter is.  _ She almost had me worshiping at her feet just for being here! _

_ No… I was worshiping. I was obeying, trapped in a heavy fog of endorphins and overwhelmed circuitry. She told me to fight-- told me to cut off the LIDAR 'fondling.' _

"The hell?" Sasha asks, panting heavily. "Wait, you know Mi...chael?" Her brain catches up, her cybernetics finally starting to work for her, rather than against her. "You know  _ me _ ?"

Sadness in two deep blue eyes stares down at her from under long, blonde hair. Try as she might, Sasha can't mentally call this one Target Another Blue-eyed Blonde  _ anything _ . She may have similarities to many of her Hunter sisters in New York, but she's just so much more  _ everything _ (including clothes) that it's hard to see her as a part of a crowd.

"I'm not going to be the last woman from the Justice Society you see who went Hunter, Sasha," the impossibly beefy beauty says slowly, then brings up her arms, coiled and cabled forearm masses flexing lightly. Sasha tenses pointlessly to try to avoid a strike; but the Hunter just points at her big titty star.

_ … Oh. _ "You're…  _ Stargirl _ ?" Sasha asks. The threat to her own person, not to mention her mission, is temporarily lost in a sort of shared despair; pain on behalf of another.

_ Poor Jay, he was so desperately hopeful you hadn't gotten caught up in any of this. _

Moving slowly, the titanic blonde raises her right hand. Just doing so makes her upper arm flex and expand more potently than any Mister Olympia winner could pose out in a Most Muscular pose. In his whole body. And that's not even counting the rugged hill of tightly connected and banded fibers that is her bulging forearm.

"Star- _ girl _ would be a bit… grotesque, don't you think?" the Hunter asks. Her voice is a rumbly but somehow smooth and melodic contralto. "I think just Star will do. Or, hell." She sighs, and shrugs her shoulders. "Call me Courtney."

The long, thick rows of muscle atop muscle bulge, but neither seem to be dragging Sasha's soul out through her eyeballs to worship, nor to try and shove fear so deep into Sasha's meat and circuits that it's stamped on top of everything she sees. Like she's trying to be careful with her beauty.  _ She can't expect me to believe some of what, good faith here? _

_ Except… _

Those blue eyes bore into Sasha's mind with all the force Star's keeping from her body language, but some of the gentleness remains. Her voice is nonetheless firm. "I need to check on my family, Sasha. I know you're scared. I wish I had time to convince you I was an ally; about the only thing I don't regret was making it quick for those bitches for even getting  _ close _ to Jay."

_ Oh. That's… surprisingly likely, actually. They're possessive. _

While Sasha tries to see whatever hidden angle the beautiful Star, or Courtney, or whatever has, she continues speaking. "I wish I did, because I really wish I knew how to contact Jay, to tell him…" Pain, real pain etches lines into her face, her teeth slamming hard together as she actually looks away from Sasha.

Like  _ she _ can't meet  _ Sasha's  _ eyes.  _ This can't be real. None of them have had anything even like mercy that isn't followed by 'kill' or qualified by "less painful!" _

But when Courtney meets Sasha's face again, Sasha wants to believe, and not out of some alien, invasive force of personality, demanding Sasha's obedience and allegiance, like Cecilia did. Cecilia's beauty and strength, her powerful voice and even more powerful personality seemed to combine to make Sasha feel like she had to owe Cecilia her lust, her love, and her instant compliance.

That, Sasha could fight against. Someone with the hurt of a mentee, of an adult daughter, but stuck on the frame of a Hunter… She feels adrift again.

"Please," Courtney whispers. "Just tell me-- is he still  _ alive _ ? Is he free?"

_ Oh, fuck it. _ Sasha has had enough of her Checkmate-style black and white thinking. Hunters aren't going anywhere soon… and if there's even a little bit of a chance of dialogue, it can start with the same word, answering twice. "Yes."

The brilliant smile mixes with a concerned look raising on her brow, a tightness to the right cheek probably from chewing on it-- Sasha feels like she can extend a bit more. She clarifies, "Yes-- he's alive, at least as of the last time I saw him, and he was as free as I could leave him. Free from Hunters, and hopefully…"

Relief and a completely nonsexual joy-- an almost non- _ possessive _ joy-- forces the tight lines of worry from around Courtney's eyes. Smooths the smile, relaxes the jaw. Even the terrifying shelf of delts and her trap visibly go into extension, losing their intimidating, flexed growth.

Sasha swallows heavily in the face of that joy, blinks, and starts again. "Free from Hunters, and hopefully, well--" She searches Star's face for anything other than a burst of impatience at the conversational stutter.

Instead of looming harder, there's a bounce to her that she's even tightening up in some way to prevent hypnotic jiggling. Like she's using Jay's superspeed to bounce in place. Or she's a gigantic young woman, barely out of her teens, with a restless leg and a bone-deep need to know her family is safe.

_ I should tell her everything, _ Sasha realizes.  _ She just brought me  _ out _ of the trance before asking. I should be grateful; maybe we can work out a treaty or-- or-- arrangement, or something. _

She remembers a horrible trial, a desperate attorney, and a contemptuous DA. She remembers a strong face, hiding its compassion so far away that she nearly didn't remember it. When things got bad.

That pen was poisoned.  _ This could just be their boss _ .  _ How do I even know those two are dead? _

Sasha's body is wracked by the thought. Her everything clenches from her butt outward. Her spine and stomach wrap around each other one way and her thighs tense as hard as they can to stop her knees from knocking.  _ How do I know it matters? _

She begins to speak, and stops again. Fists are suddenly bunched at the end of Star's terrifying arms, fists that make her burly, layered arms bulge and swell dangerously. Impatience-- and yet, Star forces her fingers to open one by one while Sasha fights her fears-- both ways.

There were many reasons that Sasha fought giving in until she could fight no longer and CHECKMATE made their offer. Because of a bodyguard's trust, a hopeful lover's devotion, and a deep contempt for people more desperate to win than to do the right thing.

But… this is a new world. A Changed Earth, Sister Eye called it. She looks over Star-- the most clothed Hunter she's seen all night, in some ways; in others, barely more clad than Jin and Cecilia started as.

Star, Courtney is beautiful. It is a tyrannical beauty in some ways, building on and reinforcing the bewitching effect Jin and Cecilia and all the other, less close encounters. But she's not just beautiful because she's more-- more size, more strength, more boobs, more muscular.

If real, that shining, hopeful face and all its entourage is all the more beautiful for the woman behind it. Because it could represent a hope that there are Hunters that mankind might not be able to treat as an equal, but could trust to bow their necks to. The brilliant smile, and now, an almost desperate urge to leap and demand, throttled with actual patience mixed with concern for Sasha?

That could be everything. It really could. And telling Courtney what she did could be the first step towards such a reconciliation.

Could be.  _ I have to face this head on. Regardless of what's real-- I owe myself that. _

Sasha inhales deeply one last time, holding her arms over her naked breasts, and a hand between her thighs, as ridiculous as that is in the face of the relentlessly sexualized Hunter. But she feels like she needs to re-claim her humanity and hold onto it. With both hands, even.

"Hopefully, he'll be working with us tighter to resist your kind. All of your kind." Courtney's eyes widen and her chin tucks down towards Sasha, suddenly tensing as though Sasha'd slapped her with a heavy enough gauntlet.

Sasha feels slapped by that sudden, ferocious pain. Her body stings with it, alloys and flesh alike vibrating with a need to surrender. Her knees are in agony, as though standing in the face of Courtney's reflexive dominance is a blasphemy that even Sasha's bones know how to expiate.

To lie down, and not fight any more. To just kneel before this newer, stronger, kinder mistress and give Star the gifts she wants. But no, Sasha doesn't.

Even though she knows it's more than a touch ungrateful.

But she's not doing it just because she's Sasha Bordeaux, and Sasha Bordeaux is stubborn that way. She takes advantage of the generosity, feigned or real or even real  _ and _ meaning the same thing to Hunter and Human, That generosity wants her to show gratitude, to obey it and to offer herself up to this past and perhaps present hero, in Hunter body.

So Sasha stiffens her spine on fighting it-- on fighting personal kindness when confronting desperate concern for another simply wouldn't.  _ I'm sorry, if you deserve my sorries, Star.  _ Besides, there's a chance that this might actually be real, and if it is…

Star-- Courtney-- stiffens further, her already enormous breasts juttting forward behind the star as lines of flexion erupt and bulge across her banded pecs. Her abs tuck in tighter, clenching towards it other. But then she sees-- something.

Whether it's Sasha's need and what that represents, some calculated risk, or just compassion if she doesn't understand the need to fight… Star bows her head an steps back. "I see," she says softly.

This time, she can't make her hands unclench from fists, so she brings them behind her back. Her hugely chiseled legs spread slowly, her high heels scratching through the rubble in a sort of instinctive parade rest to match the instinctive posing. Then she nods.

"I hope that-- I mean," Courtney whispers, then grimaces. "I don't  _ want _ to fight you, and not just because I think-- and I will admit, I do-- you should follow my lead."

_ Honesty, if honest she can be. _

She shrugs, rolling her savagely strong and strength-swelling shoulders back, then forward, relaxing her puffed-out chest. "If you're ready to talk, or maybe even trust," Courtney says slowly, meeting Sasha's eyes but not trying to stare her down.

"I'll be in Nebraska-- Blue Valley. To start. And if I can be-- at home."

Sasha nods slowly. There doesn't seem like anything more to say. And so, joints and servos still heavily damage, she starts to purposefully move forward and to the left.

Around Star, and onward, hands still protecting her scantly reclaimed dignity. Step and step, one foot in front of the other. Sasha keeps walking until she knows she can run.

_ I could get nabbed by another Hunter at any time. I still can't even feel Sister Eye. I'm just  _ guessing _ that tunnel will still be open-- just guessing. _

Safety lies back with Star-- perhaps. Perhaps the safety of a slave, perhaps the safety of a queen's knight. But while Sasha is the Black Queen of Checkmate… She's not toppled, yet.

"I wish you luck, Sasha," Star whispers behind her. "I really do-- and please. Tell Jay I can still love him like an uncle-- as long as I concentrate."

Sasha doesn't turn around, but that last admission almost stops her. But just like she used Courtney's generosity to stiffen her spine again, she uses Courtney's honesty to spur her forward.  _ If you keep being that honest, Star… maybe one day you'll get the chance to try. _

\---

No one else bothers Sasha Bordeaux that night nor in the long hours it takes to reach a Cache Node, and a nanocreche to rejoin the Sister Eye network. There, she trusts Sister Eye with a recording to send to Jay, so that he sees her face at least when she gives him the horrible news along with the hopeful. Then, she rests, and is remade.

Jay weeps to hear the news, unashamed-- held by Joan. Sister Eye reunited them across the miles-- Kansas is filled with some of the nastiest concentrations of the true prey of the Hunters. The Stealers. They debate what to do; they understand why Sasha couldn't just trust Courtney…

But what else is there, for the Justice Society of America? What can the first Flash do? Because for those who would inspire each generation of heroes, the end of the Age of Heroes hits hard.

The JSA Brownstone is gone by morning, right down to the ruined foundations. The comatose body of Alan Scott, once wielder of the Starheart, once-Sentinel and once-again Green Lantern, is taken off-planet by the Guardians, along with every other Lantern Corps members in a panic. He'd been affected by the Titan Rite, not part of it, and eventually, he wakens to a loss both personal and all-consuming.

Unable to affect the hyperformed Sun and Earth overtly, the Corps opts instead to seal off passage to the system, and use what subtle means they could to speed the Sun on his-her lonely way to orbit around the Milky Way, rather than within it.

His children are already gone. Jade and Obsidian are on Oa itself, investigating why Obsidian's dark hungers were worsening. In a bitter memory of his time with the JSA, upon news of the Stealers, Obsidian consigns himself to the Science Cells, once again hoping against hope for treatment.

Both Doctors Fate are dead. So too is sometimes-foe, sometimes-member Black Adam. Former member Billy Batson-- Captain Marvel or Shazam, depending on who's asking-- is gone, the Rock of Eternity decoupling from the changed Earth.

But his soul did not number among the dead, nor any other member of the Marvel Family. Even their foster parents-- just gone. Grant Emerson was back from the dead, brought involuntarily back with Vandal Savage.

Who suffered his own doom in the doing.

Both Power Girls were beyond the reach of any Society members still on earth, along with Jakeem Williams, Johnny Thunder, and the Thunderbolt. No one has seen Albert Rothstein, the Atom Smasher, since his last Task Force X mission vanished with all suicide devices either discharged or destroyed.

True fates unknown.

Dr. Mid-Nite, Hourman, Mr. Terrific, the first and second male Wildcats, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Sand, Jesse Quick, and the third Judomaster-- all that Jay Garrick were able to raise. The Society ushered in the Last Century; now, they must decide where, and how, to stand on the Changed Earth.

Independent resistance. Sister Eye and the mysterious projects of the Batman. Or coordination with one of the most powerful Hunters on the face of the planet and her open conquest of Nebraska.

Choices and consequences, the final flashes of the Age of Heroes.


End file.
